git-extra-commands

Table of Contents

• Included Scripts
• Useful git aliases
• Installing
  • Pre-requisites
  • zgen
  • Antigen
  • oh-my-zsh
  • Bash / Manual Installation
• Other useful git stuff
  • Articles / Blog posts / Books
  • External Git Utilities
• Miscellaneous Tips
  • Make it easier to check out default branch
  • Have git cope with typos
  • Rewrite git:// with https://
  • or replace with ssh
• Contributing
• Thanks

git-extra-commands is a ZSH plugin that packages some extra git helper scripts I've found. This collection (and the scripts that I wrote in it) is licensed with the Apache Version 2 license.

However, some of the scripts in this collection came from other sources and may have different licensing - if they do, their license information is included inline in the script source.

This collection doesn't actually require ZSH, but packaging it as a ZSH plugin makes it more convenient for people using a ZSH framework to use this collection.

If you wrote one of these scripts and want it removed from this collection, please either make a PR and/or file an issue against the repo and I will remove it.

Included Scripts

Useful git aliases

Here are some helpful aliases for your ~/.gitconfig

Installing

Pre-requisites

• A relatively recent version of git. The version of git Apple includes in macOS is very stale. You should really brew install git to get the current version if you're on macOS - if not for features, for security updates.
• Python 3+
• Ruby 2.2+

zgen

If you're using zgen:

1. Add zgen load unixorn/git-extra-commands to your .zshrc along with your other zgen load commands.
2. zgen reset && zgen save

Antigen

If you're using Antigen:

1. Add antigen bundle unixorn/git-extra-commands to your .zshrc where you've listed your other plugins.
2. Close and reopen your Terminal/iTerm window to refresh context and use the plugin. Alternatively, you can run antigen bundle unixorn/git-extra-commands in a running shell to have antigen load the new plugin.

oh-my-zsh

If you're using oh-my-zsh:

1. In the command line, change to oh-my-zsh's custom plugin directory :

   cd ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins/

2. Clone the repository into a new git-extra-commands directory:

   git clone https://github.com/unixorn/git-extra-commands.git git-extra-commands

3. Edit your ~/.zshrc and add git-extra-commands – same as clone directory – to the list of plugins to enable:

   plugins=( ... git-extra-commands )

4. Then, restart your terminal application to refresh context and use the plugin. Alternatively, you can source your current shell configuration:

   source ~/.zshrc

Bash / Manual Installation

Nothing here actually requires you to use ZSH or zgen, that's just a convenient distribution method for anyone using a ZSH framework.

If you aren't using any ZSH frameworks, or if you're using bash, fish or another shell, do the following steps:

1. git clone this repository
2. Add cloneDirectory/bin to your $PATH in your shell's startup file.

Other useful git stuff

Articles / Blog posts / Books

• awesome-github - Faraz Fallahi maintains a curated list of Github & Git resources.

• Scott Chacon's Pro Git book is a great resource for getting more out of git.

• Zach Dennis has a great blog post - A Git Walkthrough - it's worth reading on it's own, but here are a couple of good sites I found through it:

  • gitready.com/ is a great reference which has been collecting information and tips for git since 2009.
  • gitimmersion.com/

• There’s a quick Introduction to git on learnxinyminutes.com

• There's a more detailed git tutorial on learnenough.com

• Kate Hudson maintains the git flight rules collection of useful git usage tips.

• git-tips/tips is a collection of git tips.

• Leah Neukirchen wrote a great blog post, A Grab Bag of Git Tricks on git that is the source for several scripts in this collection.

• Mislav Marohnić has a good article on git tips on his blog. Several of his git scripts are in this collection.

• When you manage to get your git working directory in a sad state, you can run into the chicken-egg problem where if you just knew what command to man, you could dig yourself out of the hole, but if you knew that, you wouldn't be in the bad place anyway. Oh Shit, Git! has a collection of bad situations explained in plain English and how to get yourself out of them.

• Tim Green maintains the excellent Github Cheat Sheet collection of tips and aliases.

• firstaidgit.io is a searchable selection of the most frequently asked Git questions

• Git From the Inside Out - A good essay that explains how git works, focusing on the graph structure underpinnings of git and how they affect its behavior.

• “Git” it together: Some tips on commit etiquette and best practices for junior developers is a good article explaining some best practices on how to write a good commit message.

• Git Koans - Inspired by the Vim Koans

• Git Rebase in Depth is a good tutorial on git rebase that covers the common use cases for rebasing.

• Git Submodules Revisted is a good article by Dave Cridland on using submodules in your code.

• How to Review a Merge Commit - Good article on dealing with reviewing the changes made during a merge.

• Top ten pull request review mistakes is a great article by Scott Nonnenberg on how to do better code reviews on PRs.

• A Tidy, Linear Git History - Marcus Geelnard wrote a blog post about the value of a linear commit history.

• More Productive Git by James Turnbull is a quick tutorial for beginning git users.

• Julia Evans wrote a great blog post about Git Exercises.

• Roger Dudler wrote a good introduction to git in his git, the simple guide post.

• Patrick Porto wrote 4 Branching Workflows for git which discusses the pros and cons of four of the more popular git workflows.

• Tracking diffs by scoping to file, range, function, method, or class changes in Git is a great article by Susan Potter about making git show file-specific diffs, or even function-specific diffs in a language-aware way.

• A Thorough Introduction to Git's Interactive Patch Mode - An introduction on how to stage just parts of your changes to a commit.

External Git Utilities

• bfg repo-cleaner - Removes large or troublesome blobs like git filter-branch does, but faster.
• bitbucket-git-helpers - Helper scripts to allow you to create bitbucket PRs from a shell session.
• blackbox - Tom Limoncelli open sourced the tool they use at Stack Exchange to use GPG to store secrets in a git repository.
• branch-manager - ZSH plugin for branch management
• commit-helper - A python script that helps you write commits following commit conventions.
• diff-so-fancy - Better looking git diffs
• git ZSH plugin - A replacement for the stock oh-my-zsh git plugin. Provides quite a few useful aliases and functions that are more consistent in their naming that the relatively unintuitive ones in the stock plugin.
• git-aliases.zsh - Peter Hurford's git plugin which you may prefer to the git plugin from oh-my-zsh.
• git-also - Shows what files are most often committed with a given file in the repository.
• git-amend - Bash script to amend older commits with staged changes.
• git-branch-status - A git utility to make managing large number of branches either across many remotes easier. Branch status allows comparing all branches against their upstream or any arbitrary branch to show the number of commit differences.
• git-branches - Prints the commit behind/ahead counts for branches.
• git-bump - Hook scripts to automatically bump the version file in a repository
• git-chart - A python script that builds charts from a git repository
• git-complete-urls - ZSH plugin to enhance git tab completion to include in the remotes completion (e.g. from git clone) any URL in the clipboard.
• git-cop - Enforces git rebase workflow with consistent commits for a clean and easy to read/debug project history.
• git-crypt - Enables transparent encryption and decryption of files in a git repository. Files which you choose to protect are encrypted when committed, and decrypted when checked out.
• git-deploy-s3 - Keeps your git repository's assets in sync with Amazon S3.
• git-diffall - Provides a directory based diff mechanism for git.
• git-extend - Extend git builtins with command wrappers.
• git-fastclone - Think git clone --recursive on steroids. If you're doing repeated checkouts of a given repo on a machine (like a ci box), git-fastclone will speed things up considerably.
• git-flow-completion - Bash, Fish and ZSH completion support for git-flow
• git-follow - Follow lifetime changes of a pathspec.
• git-graph - creates a Graphviz graph showing the high-level structure of a repository's history.
• git-gutter - Plugin for Sublime Text 2/3 to display the git diff in the edit window gutter.
• git-it-on.zsh - Another plugin by Peter Hurford that adds a gitit command that will open your current directory on github, in your current branch. Also works with private github servers.
• git-quick-stats - A simple and efficient way to access various statistics in a git repository.
• git-repo-updater - Allows you to easily update multiple git repositories at once.
• git-secrets - Prevents you from committing secrets and credentials into git repositories.
• git-standup - Recall what you did on the last working day. Can work in a directory full of git repos to see a consolidated view of all work in all the repos.
• git-stashd - Autostashing daemon for dirty worktrees.
• git-submodule-tools - A collection of scripts that should help make life with git submodules easier.
• git-sweep - A utility script to remove branches that have been merged to master.
• git-todo - helper script to show all the todo entries in your repo.
• git-up (gem) - Fetch and rebase all locally-tracked remote branches.
• git-up (python) - Python implementation of Aanand's original ruby gem
• git-wayback-machine - A simple script to quickly navigate a project's state through it's git history
• git_history_visualizer - python script to visualize the history of files in a git repository
• gitbaby - Helper scripts to manage your git repositories
• gitgo - Open a GitHub/Gitlab hosted repository in your browser via the command line (macOS only).
• gitsh - An interactive shell for git. From within gitsh you can issue any git command, even using your local aliases and configuration.
• gunstage - There are at least eight ways to unstage files in a git repository. This is a command-line shell plugin for undoing git add.
• hitch - Allows developers to be properly credited when Pair Programming and using git.
• hub - A command line tool that wraps git in order to extend it with extra features and commands that make working with GitHub easier.
• igit - Interactively construct git commands using fzf.
• joe - Generates .gitignore files from the command line for you.
• mergepbx - Helper script for merging XCode project files.
• switch-git - Easy switching between git repositories. Just type sgr <some part of you repo's name>, press enter and you're there.
• xcode-build-scripts - Helper scripts to use with XCode projects.

Miscellaneous Tips

Make it easier to check out default branch

Many repositories are switching away from using master as the default branch name. You can do git config --global alias.co-default '!'"git checkout \$(git branch -r | awk -F/ '/HEAD/ {print \$NF}')" to add a co-default alias that will determine what the repository's default branch is for you.

Alternatively, add the following aliases from a tweet by @jnesselr to your .gitconfig file:

cdef = "!git checkout $(git originhead)"
originhead = "!git remote show origin | grep 'HEAD branch' | cut -d ' ' -f5"

This queries the remote to get the current up to date default branch, so it will work even if the remote's default branch changes after you did your initial checkout.

Have git cope with typos

Do git config --global help.autocorrect 1

git will now try to figure out what you meant, for example:

$ git commt
WARNING: You called a Git command named 'commt', which does not exist.
Continuing in 0.1 seconds, assuming that you meant 'commit'.

Rewrite git:// with https://

git config --global url."https://github".insteadOf git://github

or replace with ssh

Use ssh instead of https://

git config --global url."[email protected]:".insteadOf "https://github.com/"

Credit: @grawity & @hansdg1 by way of Kovrinic

Contributing

• Please include an entry both in the credits section of README.md for any scripts and a credit comment in the script itself in your PRs so authors get their work credited correctly.
• Please use #!/usr/bin/env interpreter instead of a direct path to the interpreter, this makes it easier for people to use more recent versions when the ones packaged with their OS (macOS and CentOS, I'm looking at you!) are stale.

Thanks

Many thanks to all the contributors over the years.

Made with contributors-img.