This is the first in an ongoing series of posts about basic and not so basic ways to use git. Many of these come from a wiki page I maintain at work, with the examples changed to use the git repository itself. (At work I use local examples.) Most if not all of this information is already available somewhere on the web — where do you think I learned it? — but some may appreciate my particular take on things. Or not.
Visualizing what’s going on
This is a question I get all the time:
• “How the bleepin’ bleep do I tell what’s what?!!?”
Use one of several graphical tools for git: gitk (comes with all git installs); qgit; or gitX (if you’re using a Mac); and many others. There’s even a sneaky way to do this in your terminal window:
$ git log --graph --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit * 1e63341 Merge branch 'maint' |\ | * 8695353 Fix typo in pack-objects' usage | * 8713feb Make sure that git_getpass() never returns NULL | * dbda967 t0004 (unwritable files): simplify error handling | * e14712c rev-list-options: clarify --parents and --children * | 9855b08 Start 1.7.4 cycle * | b886656 Merge branch 'tr/send-email-refuse-sending-unedited-cover-letter' |\ \ | * | a03bc5b send-email: Refuse to send cover-letter template subject * | | 34289ec Merge branch 'ab/send-email-catfile' |\ \ \ | * | | 89bf1ba send-email: use catfile() to concatenate files * | | | a27d5be Merge branch 'jc/grep-header-all-match-fix' |\ \ \ \ | * | | | 5aaeb73 log --author: take union of multiple "author" requests | * | | | 95ce9ce grep: move logic to compile header pattern into a separate helper * | | | | 08986de Merge branch 'jc/no-branch-name-with-dash-at-front' |\ \ \ \ \ | * | | | | 6348624 disallow branch names that start with a hyphen | | |/ / / | |/| | | * | | | | 0ff4bdb Merge branch 'jn/gitweb-test-lib' |\ \ \ \ \ | * | | | | 89d1b5b t/gitweb-lib.sh: Use tabs for indent consistently | * | | | | b5d3450 t/gitweb-lib.sh: Use GIT_BUILD_DIR * | | | | | 083dd39 Merge branch 'bc/fortran-userdiff' |\ \ \ \ \ \ | * | | | | | 909a549 userdiff.c: add builtin fortran regex patterns * | | | | | | 2a1be3f Merge branch 'jk/read-tree-empty' |\ \ \ \ \ \ \ | * | | | | | | fb1bb96 read-tree: deprecate syntax without tree-ish args * | | | | | | | 7fd739c Merge branch 'rr/format-patch-count-without-merges' |\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
(which looks really awesome in color…). You can make an alias for that in your global git config file:
$ git config --global alias.tree 'log --graph --pretty=oneline'
and then
git tree
will do this display for you.
Another handy tool that comes with git is git-gui, which is a Tcl/Tk application that lets you clone repos, create branches, etc. from a gui. Just type
git gui
and go to town. Here’s a brief illustration:
