Git aliases

In Chapter 2, Git Fundamentals – Working Locally we already mentioned Git aliases and their purpose; in this paragraph, I will suggest only a few more to help you make things easier.

Shortcuts to common commands

One thing you can find useful is to shorten common commands like git checkout and so on; therefore, these are some useful aliases:

$ git config --global alias.co checkout
$ git config --global alias.br branch
$ git config --global alias.ci commit
$ git config --global alias.st status

Another common practice is to shorten a command by adding one or more options that you use all the time; for example set a git cm <commit message> command shortcut to alias git commit –m <commit message>:

$ git config --global alias.cm "commit -m"

Creating commands

Another common way to customize the Git experience is to create commands you think should exist, as we did in Chapter 2, Git Fundamentals – Working Locally with the git tree command.

git unstage

The classic example is the...