Git Good - Tips & Tricks w/ Git

Intent

Share tips and tricks that I have found useful that I wish someone had shown me when I was first getting started. And even after years of experience. I'm hoping to keep this light on opinions and heavy on the tips and tricks. I'll try, anyways... x_x This piece is assuming you have at minimum a general/working knowledge of git.

Quick Overview

1. Brief history / comparison
2. Brief overview
3. Actual tips & tricks w/ live examples
4. Resources

Brief History

Before there was git, there was....

• svn
• cvs
• rcs
• so so so many others

Okokokokokokokokok. So why git?

• It's local. You get the whole repo/world when you clone
• Distributed model. Not a single point of failure. Every copy of a repo is a complete repo on it's own
• can rewrite the history! Ex/ squashing, rebasing, etc.
• Merging (from multiple sources) is a breeze
• Lots of handy functionality. Some highlights on that below

Quick Overview

• working copy
• staging area
• repository

Visual Overview

Working in a git repo:

1. local changes (local, unstaged, uncommitted)
2. staging area (local, uncommitted)
3. repository (local, committed)
4. remote (non-local, committed)

flowchart TB
    subgraph wd[working directory]
        n1(local changes)
    end
    
    subgraph staging[staging area]
        n2(test)
    end

    subgraph repo[repository]
        n3(test)
    end

    subgraph origin[origin]
        n4('remote' named 'origin' </br> by convention)
    end

    wd -- git add --> staging
    staging -- git reset HEAD -- --> wd

    staging -- git commit --> repo
    repo -- it's complicated ... </br> git reset HEAD^ --> staging

    repo -- git push origin HEAD --> origin
    origin -- N/A --> repo

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Tips & Tricks

1. git aliases
   • simple ones
   • multi-command functions
   • etc.
2. git log
   • Use the git log !!!!!
   • Help make it more useful. Craft better commit messages!
   • Hopefully understanding what the log can do helps to show what makes a good commit message
   • only as good as you make it... squash your commits AND messages
   • filenames
   • search by string
   • graphs
   • skim/jump/etc commit messages
     • git log + /${SEARCH_STRING}
     • git log --oneline
     • git log --patch
     • git show ${COMMIT} # JUST that specific commit
     • git diff origin HEAD #
     • git apply ~/my-git-patch
3. git reflog
   • recover lost branch, commits, etc.
   • recover unnitended changes
4. git cherry-pick
5. git patch + git apply
6. git rebase
   • git rebase -i HEAD~4
   • git rebase -i HEAD^^^^
     • -i for "interactive"
7. git diff
   • Diffs are human AND machine readable !
     • git diff origin HEAD
     • git diff HEAD
     • git diff main
     • git diff origin/main

Resources

• Tim Pope - A Not About Git Commit Messages
• Github Blog - on commit messages
• List of Version Control Software (Wikipedia)