git-extra-commands

[

Table of Contents

• Included Scripts
• Useful git aliases
• Installing
  • Pre-requisites
  • Zgenom
  • 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.

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.

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.

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 repository and I will remove it.

Included Scripts

Script	Original Source	Description
git-add-match	Git: programmatic staging	Allows you to use expect to automatically stage hunks matching a search term
git-add-username-remote	Ryan Tomayko's dotfiles	Adds a remote for the current repository for the given GitHub username.
git-age	Kristoffer Gronlund's wiki	A git-blame viewer, written using PyGTK.
git-amend-all	John Wiegley's git scripts	Adds all modified and deleted files, except the new files and adds them to the recent commit by amending it.
git-attic	Leah Neukirchen's blog	Displays a list of deleted files in your repository. The output is designed to be copy and pasted: Pass the second field to git show to display the file contents, or just select the hash without ^ to see the commit where removal happened.
git-authors	Michael Markert's dotfiles (as git-changes)	List authors in the repository in descending commit-count order.
git-big-file	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Show files in the repository larger than a threshold size.
git-branch-clean	@Hefeweizen	"branch clean" - rm various copies of a branch (e.g. foo-wip; origin/foo).
git-branch-date	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	List branches in commit-date order.
git-branch-diff	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Diffs your current HEAD with the default branch of the origin remote.
git-branch-name	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Prints the current branch name in automation-friendly format.
git-branch-rebaser	Vengada Rangaraju krangaraju@castlighthealth.com	Kicks off an interactive rebase of all the commits on your branch. Including pushed commits, so be careful.
git-branch-status	John Wiegley's git scripts	Colorized status report on all branches in your repository.
git-branches-that-touch	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Shows which branches touch files under a path that are remote, unmerged, have a commit in the last six months and whose name doesn't start with 'enterprise-'.
git-bug-clusters	The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code	Shows the files that have the most bugfix comments in commits affecting them.
git-capture-wip	@Hefeweizen	Capture in-progress file changes.
git-change-author	Michael Demmer in jut-io/git-scripts	Change one author/email in the history to another.
git-change-log	John Wiegley's git-scripts	Transform git log output into a complete Changelog for projects that haven't been maintaining one.
git-changes	Michael Markert's dotfiles	Symlink to git-authors. List authors in the repository in descending commit-count order.
git-checkout-branches	John Wiegley's git scripts	Checks out all remote branches.
git-checkout-by-date	Stack Overflow	Lets you checkout several files at once at the version specified by a date.
git-checkout-commit	From the fzf wiki	Uses fzf to checkout a commit, showing the commit diff as preview.
git-checkout-default-branch	I got tired of keeping track of which repositories use main, master or something else as default branch	Checks out the default branch of the origin remote so you don't have to remember which repositories use master, main or whatever.
git-checkout-pr	Based on gist.github.com/gnarf/5406589	Check out a PR locally.
git-checkout-preview	From the fzf wiki	Uses fzf to checkout a branch, showing what commits diverge between the branches.
git-checkout-tag	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Check out a tag into a branch named after the tag.
git-children-of	John Wiegley's git-scripts	Shows the children of a given git commit.
git-churn	Gary Bernhardt's dotfiles	Show which files are getting changed most often in the repository.
git-clone-subset	Rodrigo Silva (MestreLion) linux@rodrigosilva.com	Uses git clone and git filter-branch to remove from the clone all files but the ones requested, along with their associated commit history.
git-comma	Leah Neukirchen's blog	Adds and commits a file in one command.
git-commit-browser	From the fzf wiki	Uses fzf to browse commit history.
git-conflicts	Seth Messer's bits and bobs repository	Show files with conflicts.
git-copy-branch-name	Zach Holman's dotfiles	Copy the current branch's name to the clipboard (macOS Only).
git-credit	git-credit-author	Zach Holman's dotfiles
git-current-branch	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Prints the name of the current branch with no odd characters or formatting, mainly useful in automation scripts.
git-current-commit	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Prints the hash of the current commit with no odd characters or formatting, mainly useful in automation scripts.
git-cut-branch	Ryan Tomayko's dotfiles	Create a new branch pointed at HEAD and reset the current branch to the head of its tracking branch.
git-delete-dangling-commits	Stack Overflow	Clean up dangling commits that are not on any branch.
git-delete-local-merged	From a deleted post by @tekkub	Delete all local branches that have been merged into HEAD.
git-delete-merged-branches	?	Purges all branches that have been merged to a target branch (defaults to branches merged to master).
git-delete-remote-branch	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Delete a branch from a specified remote.
git-delete-squashed-and-merged-branches	Paul Irish's dotfiles	Purges all branches that have been squashed and merged to a target branch (defaults to branches merged to master). Requires pygithub.
git-delete-tag	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Delete a tag, both locally and from the origin remote.
git-diff-last	Sebastian Schuberth	Show the last change made to a file in the repository.
git-divergence	Gary Bernhardt's dotfiles	Shows differences between local branch and its tracking branch.
git-edit-conflicts	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Edit the files that are marked as conflicted during a merge/rebase in your $EDITOR/$VISUAL.
git-fetch-prs	Pretty sure I saw this on slack, but can't recall which one	Get all Pull Request branches from a given remote by refspec.
git-files	Jake Zimmerman's blog	List the files different between the current branch and $REVIEW_BRANCH, which if unset defaults to the repository's default branch.
git-find-dirty	Matthew McCullough's scripts repository.
git-firefights	The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code	Shows revert and hotfix frequency
git-flush	John Wiegley's git-scripts	Compact your repository by dropping all reflogs, stashes, and other cruft that may be bloating your pack files.
git-force-mtimes	John Wiegley's git-scripts	Sets modification times of all files in the repository their last change date based on git's log. Useful to avoid too new dates after a checkout confusing make or rake.
git-forest	Jan Engelhardt	Prints a text-based tree visualisation of your repository. Requires Git.pm.
git-functionlog	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Allows you to get a git log of a particular function, not a file.
git-fzf-add	Fuzzy Finding in Bash with fzf	Use fzf to select files to add to git.
git-fzf-log-browser	Fuzzy Finding in Bash with fzf	Use fzf to browse the repository's git log.
git-fzf-pickaxe-browser	Fuzzy Finding in Bash with fzf	Use fzf to display a git log list that has been filtered with pickaxe for a search term.
git-fzf-reflog-browser	Fuzzy Finding in Bash with fzf	Use fzf to browse the repository's git reflog list that can be filtered by entering a fuzzy term at the prompt. Navigation up and down the hash list will preview the changes of each hash.
git-git	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Typing git git foo will make git do a git foo instead of complaining.
git-github-open	?	Open GitHub file/blob page for FILE on LINE.
git-gitlab-mr	Noel Cower's gist	Open a merge request on GitLab.
git-history-graph	Stack Overflow	Pretty git log, single line per commit, with branch graphing.
git-ignored	?	Show files being ignored by git in the repository.
git-improved-merge	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Sophisticated git merge with integrated CI check and automatic cleanup.
git-incoming	Michael Markert's dotfiles	Show commits in the tracking branch that are not in the local branch.
git-jump	Cowboy's dotfiles	Replays git commits by moving forward / backward through a branch's history.
git-latest-tag	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Fetch tags from all remotes and show the most recent tag name.
git-lines	Neil Killeen nkilleen@castlighthealth.com	Gives you a list of author names with the number of lines last updated by that user in files in the current directory tree with the extension specified.
git-log-single-file	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Show the log for a single file.
git-ls-branch-files	Joe Block	List files changed between a specified branch and the current branch.
git-ls-object-refs	Ryan Tomayko's dotfiles	Find references to an object with SHA1 in refs, commits, and trees. All of them.
git-maildiff	Sanjeev Kumar's blogpost	A simple git command to email diff in color to reviewer/ co-worker.
git-make-gitignore	#commandline-fu on coffeeops	Prints a language-specific .gitignore file using gitignore.io.
git-maxpack	John Wiegley's git-scripts	Compress a repository's pack files as much as possible.
git-merged-branches	Sergei Boiko's Git housekeeping tutorial: clean-up outdated branches in local and remote repositories article	Lists all branches that have been merged.
git-mostchanged	The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code	git mostchanged --numfiles INTEGER shows the number of files with the most changes over the last year.
git-move-commits	Corey Oordt's git-scripts	git move-commits num-commits correct-branch moves the last n commits to correct-branch (creating it if necessary).
git-neck	Leah Neukirchen's blog	Show commits from the HEAD until the first branching point. Companion script for git-trail.
git-nuke	Zach Holman's dotfiles	Nukes a branch locally and on the origin remote.
git-object-deflate	Ryan Tomayko's dotfiles	Deflate an loose object file and write to standard output.
git-oldest-common-ancestor	Lee Dohm's dotfiles	Finds the oldest common ancestor commit between two branches.
git-open-jira	?	If the branch name starts with JIRAPROJECT-NNNN, will open that issue in jira. Assumes that your JIRA server location is in ~/.jira-server or in the $JIRA_SERVER environment variable.
git-origin-head	Don't recall, maybe twitter	Prints the name of the origin remote's default branch. Not every repository uses main or master.
git-outgoing	Michael Markert's dotfiles	Show commits that are on the local branch that have not been pushed to the tracking branch.
git-overwritten	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Aggregates git blame information about original owners of lines changed or removed in the '...' diff.
git-pie-ify	JeeBak Kim's gist	git pie-ify pattern replacement
git-plotrepo	Matthew McCullogh's scripts collection	Uses dot to draw a graph of the repository.
git-pr-fetch	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Fetch PR branches by refspec from one of a repository's remotes.
git-pr-list	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Lists pull requests. Requires gh.
git-promote	Trevor's Improving My git Workflow blog post (404 now)	Promotes a local topic branch to a remote tracking branch of the same name.
git-prune-branches	Michael Demmer in jut-io/git-scripts	Deletes each fully merged branch after prompting for confirmation, than asks if you want the deleted branches deleted from your upstream remotes.
git-pruneall	Ryan Tomayko's dotfiles	Prune branches from specified remotes, or all remotes when no remote is specified.
git-publish	Michael Markert's dotfiles	git publish remote [remote-branch].
git-purge-from-history	David Underhill’s blog	Permanently delete files or folders from your git repository.
git-pylint	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Runs pylint on any .py files modified or added in the git status output.
git-rank-contributors	William Morgan wmorgan-git-wt-add@masanjin.net	Rummages through the changelog and orders contributors by the size of the diffs they're responsible for.
git-rebase-authors	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Adds authorship info to interactive git rebase output.
git-rebase-theirs	Rodrigo Silva (MestreLion) linux@rodrigosilva.com	Resolve rebase conflicts by favoring 'theirs' version.
git-recent	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Shows information about most recent commit on all local branches.
git-recently-checkedout-branches	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Shows timestamp and name of recently checked-out branches in reverse chronological order.
git-ref-recent	Y combinator article	Shows the date, branch name, commit hash, and commit subject of branches, from most recently modified to oldest branches.
git-rel	Ryan Tomayko's dotfiles	Shows the relationship between the current branch and ref. With no ref, the current branch's remote tracking branch is used.
git-related	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Show other files that often get changed in commits that touch <file>.
git-release-tag	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Create a GitHub release for a specified tag. The release notes are automatically populated with the contents of git log since the last tagged version.
git-remote-default-branch	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Shows the default branch for a specified remote, defaults to origin when no remote is specified.
git-remove-conflicts ours or theirs FILES...	John Wiegley's git scripts	Automatically resolves conflicts by applying the changes from current branch (ours) or remote branch (theirs).
git-rename-branches	Rodrigo Silva (MestreLion) linux@rodrigosilva.com	Rename multiple branches that start with a given name.
git-replace-author	Stack Overflow	Uses git-filter-branch to rewrite all commits with one name to use another name and email.
git-reset-with-fire	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Hard reset the working directory, then zap any files not known to git.
git-restore-mtime	Rodrigo Silva (MestreLion) linux@rodrigosilva.com	Change mtime of files based on commit date of last change.
git-reup	Zach Holman's dotfiles	Like git pull but show a short and sexy log of changes after merging or rebasing.
git-review-commits	Julia Evans'blog	Use fzf topreview commits
git-rm-deleted-from-repo	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Removes files you deleted with rm from the repository for you.
git-root-directory	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Prints the path to the root of the git repository you're in.
git-run-command-on-revisions	Gary Bernhardt's dotfiles	Runs a given command over a range of git revisions.
git-semvers	Daniel Hoherd	List all the tags in a repo that are semver compliant
git-shamend	Danielle Sucher's git-shamend blog post	Amends your staged changes as a fixup (keeping the pre-existing commit message) to the specified commit, or HEAD if no revision is specified.
git-show-overwritten	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Aggregates git blame information about the original owners of lines changed or removed in the '...' diff.
git-shrink-repo	Based on gimbo/gimbo-git.zsh	Shrinks your clone of a git repository.
git-side-by-side	Greg V's vmware-archive/git_scripts	@hefeweizen on the coffeeops slack
git-sp	A. Schwarz's git-sp	"Simple push", single short command to commit, and push. Use -a flag to add all files to commit.
git-sr	Noel Cower's git-sr	Use fzf to switch to a different git ref.
git-stats	Jake Zimmerman's blog	Displays stats for the files different between the current branch and $REVIEW_BRANCH, which if unset defaults to the repository's default branch.
git-submodule-ls		List all submodules in your project
git-submodule-paths	git-submodule --help	Show path to all submodules in your checkout, with their current commit SHA
git-submodule-rm	Greg V's dotfiles & Pascal Sommer	Allows you to remove a submodule easily with git submodule-rm path/to/submodule.
git-superpull	Greg V's vmware-archive/git_scripts	Pulls, then does a git submodule init and git submodule update.
git-switch-branch	Andrew Steele's dotfiles	Make it easier to switch to a branch by a substring of its name. More useful if you are good about deleting branches which have been merged upstream and if your branch names include unique identifiers like ticket/issue numbers or feature names.
git-tag-and-sign	?	Create and sign a new tag.
git-tag-diff	John Wiegley's git-scripts	Show the differences between local tags and ones on the remote, if any.
git-thanks	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	List the contributors to a repository in descending commit order, even if their contribution has been completely replaced.
git-track	Zach Holman's dotfiles	Sets up your branch to track a remote branch. Assumes you mean origin/localbranchname.
git-trail	Leah Neukirchen's blog	Show all branching points in the repository's git history so you can see how to reach commits in the current branch from other branches.
git-undelete	?	Undeletes a file.
git-undo-push	?	Undoes your last push to branch $1 of origin.
git-undo	Stack Overflow	Undoes your last commit but keeps the changes in place.
git-unpushed	Zach Holman's dotfiles	Show the diff of everything you haven't pushed to the origin remote yet.
git-unreleased	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Shows git commits since the last tagged version.
git-up	Zach Holman's dotfiles	Like git pull but show a short and sexy log of changes after merging or rebasing.
git-upstream-name	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Print the name of the current branch's upstream.
git-upstream-sync	Joe Block jpb@unixorn.net	Fetches upstream/yourforkname and rebases it into your local fork, then pushes to your origin remote.
git-velocity	The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code	Commit count by month, for the entire history of the repo
git-what-the-hell-just-happened	Gary Bernhardt's dotfiles	Show what just happened.
git-when-merged	Michael Haggerty git-when-merged	Find when a commit was merged into one or more branches.
git-where-pr	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Opens the Pull Request on GitHub where a specified commit originated.
git-where	Mislav Marohnić's dotfiles	Shows where a particular commit falls between releases.
git-whoami	Peter Eisentraut	Shows what username & email you have configured for the repository you're in.
git-winner	Garry Dolley https://github.com/up_the_irons/git-winner	Shows what authors have made the most commits, both by number of commits and by number of lines changed.
git-wordiness	Noel Cower	Shows how wordy people's commit messages are. Useful for shaming the folks who commit atrocities like git commit -m fixup.
git-wtf	William Morgan wmorgan-git-wt-add@masanjin.net	git-wtf displays the state of your repository in a readable, easy-to-scan format. It's useful for getting a summary of how a branch relates to a remote server, and for wrangling many topic branches.

Useful git aliases

Here are some helpful aliases for your ~/.gitconfig

alias	Description
ahead-of-main = log --oneline origin/main..HEAD	Show commits that haven't made it to main yet.
fetch-pull-requests = fetch origin '+refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pull/*'	Fetch pull requests from GitHub so you can git checkout pull/123 and test them locally.
roots = log --all --oneline --decorate --max-parents=0	Show the root commits.
unpushed = log @{u}..	Show which commits have not been pushed to the tracking branch and are safe to amend/rebase.
work-in-progress = rebase -i @{u}	Starts an interactive rebase of all the commits you haven't pushed yet. Handy for collapsing a bunch of work-in-progress snapshots into logical commits before pushing, without having to worry about accidentally squashing a commit someone else has already referred to.

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+

Zgenom

If you're using Zgenom:

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

Antigen

If you're using Antigen:

1. Add antigen bundle unixorn/git-extra-commands@main 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. Clone the repository into a new git-extra-commands directory in oh-my-zsh's plugin folder:

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

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

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

3. 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 /path/to/git-extra-commands/bin to your $PATH in your shell's startup files.

Other useful git stuff

Articles / Blog posts / Books

• “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, no matter what source control system you're using.
• 4 Branching Workflows for git by Patrick Porto discusses the pros and cons of four of the more popular git workflows.
• 5 types of Git workflows that will help you deliver better code explains five different Git workflows and the way they tackle various aspects of code collaboration: introducing changes, solving conflicts, using branches, and more.
• A Git Walkthrough by Zach Dennis is a great blog post
• A Grab Bag of Git Tricks by Leah Neukirchen is a great blog post on git that is the source for several scripts in this collection.
• A Guide to GIT using spatial analogies - Some developers find git takes a little getting used to, claiming that it is conceptually convoluted compared to other distributed version control systems. Here are a couple of simple spatial analogies to help become proficient and fluent in using git's command-line interface.
• A Thorough Introduction to Git's Interactive Patch Mode is an introduction on how to stage just parts of your changes to a commit.
• A Tidy, Linear Git History by Marcus Geelnard is a blog post about the value of a linear commit history.
• awesome-github - Faraz Fallahi maintains a curated list of GitHub & Git resources.
• Conditional .gitconfig by Marcus Crane explains how to have different .gitconfig settings based on where the checkout is located. This makes it easy to have a work directory with work settings applied to all repositories in it, and a personal one with different settings.
• Fixing commits with git commit --fixup and git rebase --autosquash - Jordan wrote a good summary of how to use fixup commits in your workflow.
• Fuzzy Finding in Bash with fzf is a great article about using fzf with some git helper scripts.
• Fuzzy Git Checkout by Mark Nielsen explains how to use fzf for git checkouts.
• Git Config - Instructions for using directory-specific git configurations. Automatically switching email addresses based on what directory a git repository is in.
• Git Exercises is a great blog post by Julia Evans. She also covers some other miscellaneous git facts here.
• git flight rules by Kate Hudson is a collection of useful git usage tips.
• Git From the Inside Out explains how git works, focusing on the graph structure underpinnings of git and how they affect its behavior.
• Git Log Customization - Good tutorial about customizing the format of git log.
• Git Rebase in Depth is a good tutorial on git rebase that covers the common use cases for rebasing.
• Git Rebase: What Can Go Wrong - Another good explanation by Julia Evans.
• Git Spelunking with Bisect - A brief introduction to git bisect.
• Git Submodules Revisted is a good article by Dave Cridland on using submodules in your code.
• git-tips by Mislav Marohnić is a good article on git tips. Several of his git scripts are in this collection.
• git-tips/tips is a collection of git tips.
• git, the simple guide by Roger Dudler is a good introduction to git.
• GitHub Cheat Sheet is an excellent collection of tips and aliases maintained by Tim Green.
• gitimmersion.com/ is a guided tour that walks through the fundamentals of Git, inspired by the premise that to know a thing is to do it.
• How Core Git Developers Configure Git - What git config settings should be defaults by now? Here are some settings that even the core developers change.
• How Does Git Work? - A basic introduction to git.
• How I configure my Git identities - How to use includeif to (among other tricks) automatically change what email is credited as author depending on what git repository you're working on.
• How to Review a Merge Commit is a good article on dealing with reviewing the changes made during a merge.
• Ignoring bulk change commits with git blame - Shows how to ignore certain commits in your repository in git blame output. Very useful for ignoring commits with large changes created by automated tools like black.
• Introduction to git on learnxinyminutes.com is a quick intro.
• Learn Git Branching is the most visual and interactive way to learn git on the web; you'll be challenged with exciting levels, given step-by-step demonstrations of powerful features, and maybe even have a bit of fun along the way.
• learnenough.com has a more detailed git tutorial on
• More Productive Git by James Turnbull is a quick tutorial for beginning git users.
• Oh Shit, Git! has a collection of bad situations explained in plain English and how to get yourself out of them . 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.
• Platform Specific Gitconfigs and the Wonderful includeif by Mike Mackintosh explains how to have different gitconfig settings based on what platform you're on or what directory you're in. Makes it easier to have personal and work repos on the same machine.
• Pro Git by Scott Chacon is a great resource for getting more out of git.
• So You Think You Know Git? - Scott Chacon's FOSDEM 2024 talk on Git Tips and Tricks.
• The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code - Five git commands that tell you where a codebase hurts before you open a single file. Churn hotspots, bus factor, bug clusters, and crisis patterns.
• The Git Pickaxe explains how you can use the git pickaxe to search easily for strings in commit messages - write good commit messages and it'll be easier to find the commits that actually implement changes.
• Top ten pull request review mistakes is a great article by Scott Nonnenberg on how to do better code reviews on PRs.
• Tracing the evolution of a Python function with git log - Nice tutorial on making git log output more useful when you're only interested in the changes in a specific function.
• 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.

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.
• dunk - Another tool for prettier git diffs.
• fzf-git-worktree - Manage git worktrees with fzf integration.
• gig - a CLI .gitignore generator
• 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_history_visualizer - python script to visualize the history of files in a git repository
• git-absorb - Essentially, when your working directory has uncommitted changes on top of draft changesets, you can run git absorb and the uncommitted modifications are automagically folded ("absorbed") into the appropriate draft ancestor commits. The command essentially looks at the lines that were modified, finds a commit modifying those lines, and amends that commit to include your uncommitted changes. If the changes can't be made without conflicts, they remain uncommitted. This workflow is insanely useful for things like applying review feedback.
• git-activity - Displays an activity graph (like the contribution graph on GitHub) for the current git repository and branch.
• 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-cl - SVN-style changelists for Git. Organise files by intent, commit by changelist, create branches from changelists.
• git-clean-branch - Cleans up dead git branches.
• git-cleanbranches - A powerful unified clean up tool for git branches that uses fzf to find all branches that are safe to delete.
• git-cliff - git-cliff can generate changelog files from the Git history by utilizing conventional commits as well as regex-powered custom parsers. The changelog template can be customized with a configuration file to match the desired format.
• 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-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 repository 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-fuzzy - A CLI interface to git that relies heavily on fzf.
• 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-lint - Enforces git rebase workflow with consistent commits for a clean and easy to read/debug project history.
• git-profile - Manage multiple git accounts in ZSH by auto-switching user.name, user.email, and signing keys based on directory path or repository remote URL. Never push a commit under the wrong identity again.
• git-prompt-kit - A configurable set of components for creating feature rich, high performance Git-aware zsh prompts (aka themes) with minimal coding.
• 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 repositories to see a consolidated view of all work in all the repositories.
• 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-tidy - Plugin for safely reviewing and removing local branches whose upstream branch is marked [gone].
• git-to-jj - A ZSH plugin that helps you progressively learn Jujutsu (aka jj) porcelain as you use git commands.
• git-todo - helper script to show all the todo entries in your repository.
• git-up (gem) - Fetch and rebase all locally-tracked remote branches.
• git-up (python) - Python implementation of Aanand's original ruby gem
• git-user-switch - ZSH plugin that lets you switch between multiple GitHub user accounts. It automatically updates both your SSH configuration and GitHub CLI (gh) authentication.
• git-wayback-machine - A simple script to quickly navigate a project's state through it's git history
• git-worktree (alexiszamanidis) - Wraps some git worktree operations for simplicity and productivity. Includes fzf tooling.
• git-worktree (trthomps) - Enhanced git worktree management with bare repository support. This plugin provides convenient commands for working with git worktrees, making it easy to work on multiple branches simultaneously.
• gitgo - Open a GitHub/Gitlab hosted repository in your browser via the command-line (macOS only).
• gitql - Gitql is a git query language.
• gitsh - An interactive shell for git. From within gitsh you can issue any git command, even using your local aliases and configuration.
• gitty - Single-binary CLI for Git and GitHub with short, human-readable commands. gitty up stages, commits, and pushes in one step.
• 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.
• more-hooks-for-git - Adds extra hooks for git add, git diff and git status.
• switch-git - Easy switching between git repositories. Just type sgr <some part of you repo's name>, press enter and you're there.
• ugit - Lets you undo your last git operation.
• worktree - Adds functions that wrap git worktree.
• xcode-build-scripts - Helper scripts to use with XCode projects.
• zwirl - Adds aliases for git and eza.

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."git@github.com:".insteadOf "https://github.com/"

Credit: @grawity & @hansdg1 by way of @Kovrinic's gist

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.