Aliases

Add aliases to Git as short-cuts to the command frequently used or for those tricky to remember commands not used very often, but help you get yourself out of trouble with Git.

Git Log

The default git log command is very verbose in its output, especially when you have many commits. Using a few options to the git log command you can get a much more useful output.

oneline

As you can probably guess, the --oneline option puts all the information of a commit on one line. This commit information is the abreviated commit number and the commit message.

graph option

This displays the log as a graph showing where branching and merging has taken place

decorate option

This shows which branches are on which commit versions, including remote repositories that have been added to the local repository. So you can easily see the most recent commit for repository and branch. This information help you understand if you need to push or merge commits between repositories and branches.

Add the Git log alias

Putting these three options together in the alias file:

    [alias]
      lg = log --oneline --graph --decorate

hardcore customisation

You can also define exactly what information you want displayed each line of the Git log (and in what color) using the --pretty option

    [alias]
      lp = log
           --graph
           --pretty=format:
             '%C(cyan)%h%Creset - %C(bold yellow)%d%Creset %s %C(blue)(%ar) %C(magenta)%an%Creset'
           --all

The above alias should all be on one line in the .gitconfig file

Other useful aliases

When you become a regular git user you will notice you type git status very often. You may also notice it is also quite verbose in its output. Once you know the different stages of your workflow of changes (untracked, modified, staged) you simply get a summary view of the status by using the -s option

git status -s

add branch information to the status output

    [alias]
      sitrep = status -sb
      sr = status -sb
      word = diff --word-diff
      unstage = reset HEAD

Read the official documentation on git customisation for more options.