You don't know Git - Jason McCreary - Laracon Online

I know my way around Git but for anything more than the basics I’ll end up googling solutions. Jason’s talk packed in so much Git wisdom and gave me a few ‘mind blown’ moments. My main takeaway was that you can really improve your Git workflow by learning around 15 commands.

Part 1 - Unfamiliar Commands

git add -p opens interactive prompt that allows you to go through each of your changes incrementally.

Don’t rush to git add .. Pick up good habits and run through things step by step.

git stash is not recommended for continual workflow but useful if you want to quickly wipe the slate clean.

git push origin master:newbranch is a quick way to create another branch.

git log shows git history

git rebase -i allows you to rework commits by combining, renaming or deleting them. This command affects git history, so do it before you share a branch.

git cherry-pick can take one or two commits from one branch and move them to another. This command affects git history.

git bisect helps us narrow down out where a bug was introduced into a codebase. Can be a big time saver over a more manual approach.

Part 2 - Common workflows

git flow - A branching model to improve parellel development experience. Possibly too complicated.

github flow - A lightweight alternative with feature branches and a long running master branch. It fits more with continuous deployment and cuts down on big merge problems.

Part 3 - Helpful shorthands

git log --oneline -1 HEAD logs the latest commit.

git log --oneline -1 HEAD~1 shows one commit before the last.

git push origin HEAD will always push top most commit to the right location.

git checkout - switchs to last used branch.

Aliases

git status is worth aliasing considering how much it’s used. Don’t alias all of the git core commands though - use tab completion instead. Aliases can prevent you from learning the commands you are using and what they are doing.

Use a git prompt.

Links

Getting Git - Jason’s Git course.