10 Git Tricks Every Developer Should Know

Here’s ten tricks you can use in git to supercharge collaborative coding.

Access The In-Built Cheat-Sheet

Did you know git had its own in built quick reference guide that comes along with the installation package? Here’s how you can access it

git help everyday

This will open an html page in your default browser, you can use this as a quick reference guide to brush up on your git skills.

access the in-built cheat-sheet

Commit Message With Summary And Description

Here’s how you can (should) format your commit messages for extensive readability. Keep in mind to follow the 50/72 rule to follow standards, i.e. summary should be no more than 50 characters and 72 for description.

git commit -m "<summary>" -m "<description>"

You can see how they appear in the commit logs

This is how they look in github commits

Search Older Commits By Commit Message

You can search for older commits using the following command. This can be particularly useful if you name your commit message with your JIRA ticket number.

git log --grep="<commit_message>

Find Who Edited What

If you feel like blaming someone else for some line of code which stopped working, there’s a git command for that

git blame <file_name>

This will print the current file with the commit id along with the developer’s name on the left side of each line of code.

git blame

For a better UX you can use the annotate command in Android Studio for the same result

annotate sounds less threatening than blame

Set aliases for git commands

You can also set aliases for git commands if you don’t feel like typing too much

git config --global alias.<alias_name> <command_name>

An example showing an alias set for status to st

Switch To Last Working Branch

Let’s say you’re working on your development branch and your manager asks you to quickly get a build ready from the master branch. You take your stash, switch to master and build your apk, now to switch back you have to type in that long branch name again, worse if you don’t remember the name and you have to look it up. Here’s a shortcut you can use to ease your life

git checkout -

Here you can see me switching from dev to master using the shortcut

Auto Correct Typos

If you’re feeling brave, you can set git to autocorrect your typos. For example, stats would get auto-corrected to status. Bear in mind, some auto-corrects can be ambiguous and git uses its own algorithm to determine what would be the correct command for your typo.

git config --global help.autocorrect 1

git autocorrecting ‘brnch’ to branch

Show File From Another Branch

Let’s say you’re working in your dev branch and you quickly need to refer some change which you did in another branch. Instead of switching branches, you can use this shortcut to see your file from the other branch

git show <branch>:<file_name>

Fix Typo In Last Commit Message

How many times has it happened to you that you made a typo in your commit message. Git allows you to easily fix that with the amend command

git commit -v --amend -m "<updated_mesage>"

-v is completely optional but I like the verbosity

Watch me fix my typo

Undo Last Local Commit And Keep Changes

Let’s say you made your commit after a day’s long work but you commited your code in another branch. Of course you wouldn’t want to lose all that work, here’s how you can revert that last commit while keeping your changes

git reset HEAD^