Git: aliases and hooks

Git aliases

Open ~/.gitconfig with your favorite text editor.

vim ~/.gitconfig

And paste the following config.

[alias]
  st = status
  ci = commit
  co = checkout
  br = branch
  history = "!git log --pretty=format:\"%Cblue%ad%Creset : %an :%C(yellow)%d %Creset:%Cgreen %s \" --reverse --all --since=1.month.ago --author=\"$(git config user.name)\""
  undo = reset --soft HEAD~1

They are basically shortcuts for the common git commands.

• git history: It shows last month’s commits for the current user, or as my one of my friends call it git toggl.
• git undo: Who doesn’t screw up a commit? wrong files, wrong message, endless possibilities…

Git hooks

Hooks are programs you can place in a hooks directory to trigger actions at certain points in git’s execution. - docs

Make a new directory in home to store them.

Download a pre-commit file. It contains a scrap of code which won’t let you commit files with debuggers. It works for Ruby/Ruby on Rails projects by scanning each line for debuggers. It will let you know if you forgot something.

mkdir -p ~/.git-hooks
wget --output-document ~/.git-hooks/pre-commit https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mgb313/7bd00aaffe5085830127a56ef7ec1926/raw/1fa454b07c41e4a35b47c47597e6eba02632b7f8/pre-commit
chmod +x ~/.git-hooks/pre-commit

Tell git where to find your hooks:

[core]
  hooksPath = ~/.git_hooks
  excludesfile = ~/.gitignore_global

Now every time call to git commit will be checked against those patterns. If you want to commit your changes anyway, use git commit --no-verify to bypass the pre-commit and commit-msg hooks.

You can also add a .gitignore file to be used globally.