Git
Git is version control software. Use it to track changes to files and revert mistakes. Think of it like a Save Progress button.
Configure
Name and email
List your config.
git config -l
Configure your name and email.
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "youremail@yourdomain.com"
Your config is saved in ~/.gitconfig. Edit it with a text editor.
open ~/.gitconfig
Merge tool
Configure VS Code as merge and diff tools.
# Configure VS Code as git mergetool
git config --global merge.tool vscode
git config --global mergetool.vscode.cmd 'code --wait --merge $REMOTE $LOCAL $BASE $MERGED'
git config --global mergetool.keepBackup false
# Configure VS Code as git difftool
git config --global diff.tool vscode
git config --global difftool.vscode.cmd 'code --wait --diff $LOCAL $REMOTE'
Tag
List available Git tags.
git tag
Push tag to a remote, e.g., origin.
git push origin ${TAG}
Best practices
- The
mainbranch is the one source of truth. Feature branches branch frommain. - Use
git rebaseinstead ofgit mergeto enforce linear history. This makes commits easier to group and track.
Commit
Use Commitizen to write properly formatted commit messages: cz c
Use Commitizen with a semantic release tool ensures that your code has a unique version number. The version number is based on Git history.
Write commit messages to finish the sentence, "This commit will..."
Some examples:
- "add a link to the contributing guide"
- "create new file structure for packages"
- "update broken URL"
Version and release
- Use a semantic versioning library to generate version numbers and tags from your commit messages.
- Python: python-semantic-release
- Node.js: standard-version or its equivalent
Snippets
Push a branch from one remote (i.e., origin) to another, preserving its name.
git push "${REMOTE_NAME}" "origin/${BRANCH_HAME}:refs/heads/${BRANCH_HAME}"
Get details about a commit, including its parent, the previous commit. This is useful for rebasing or working with Commitizen.
git show "${COMMIT_HASH}"
Get only the parent commit of a commit.
git rev-parse "${COMMIT_HASH}^"
Free up disk space by collecting garbage and compressing all repositories under the given directory DIR.
find "${DIR}" -type d -name ".git" -execdir git gc \;
Revert commits from the HEAD to a past commit.
git revert --no-commit ${COMMIT_HASH+1}..HEAD
git commit -m 'Revert to ${COMMIT_HASH}'