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content/elsewhere/three-magical-git-aliases/index.md

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+---
+title: "Three Magical Git Aliases"
+date: 2012-04-25T00:00:00+00:00
+draft: false
+needs_review: true
+canonical_url: https://www.viget.com/articles/three-magical-git-aliases/
+---
+
+Git is an enormously powerful tool, but certainly not the most
+beginner-friendly. The basic commands are straightforward enough, but
+until you wrap your head around its internal model, it's easy to wind up
+in a jumble of merge commits or worse. Here are three aliases I use as
+part of my daily workflow that help me avoid many of the common
+pitfalls.
+
+### GPP (`git pull --rebase && git push`)
+
+**I can't push without pulling, and I can't pull without rebasing.** I'm
+not sure this is still a point of debate, but if so, let me make my side
+known: I hate hate *hate* merge commits. And of course, what does Git
+tell you after an unsuccessful push?
+
+    Merge the remote changes (e.g. 'git pull') before pushing again.
+
+This will create a merge commit, regardless of whether there are any
+conflicts between your changes and the remote. There are ways to prevent
+these merge commits [at the configuration
+level](https://viget.com/extend/only-you-can-prevent-git-merge-commits),
+but they aren't foolproof. This alias is.
+
+### GMF (`git merge --ff-only`)
+
+**I can't create merge commits.** Similar to the last, this alias
+prevents me from ever creating merge commits. I do my work in a topic
+branch, and when the time comes to merge it back to the mainline
+development branch, I check that branch out and pull down the latest
+changes. At this point, if I were to type `git merge [branchname]`, I'd
+create a merge commit.
+
+Using this alias, though, the merge fails and I receive a warning that
+this is not a [fast-forward
+merge](https://365git.tumblr.com/post/504140728/fast-forward-merge). I
+then check out my topic branch, rebase master, and then run the merge
+successfully.
+
+### GAP (`git add --patch`)
+
+**I can't commit a code change without looking at it first.** Running
+this command rather than `git add .` or using a commit flag lets me view
+individual changes and decide whether or not I want to stage them. This
+forces me to give everything I'm committing a final check and ensure
+there isn't any undesirable code. It also allows me to break a set of
+changes up into multiple commits, even if those changes are in the same
+file.
+
+What `git add --patch` doesn't do is stage new files, so you'll have to
+add those by hand once you're done patching.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Hope you find one or more of these aliases helpful. These *and more!*
+available in my
+[dotfiles](https://github.com/dce/dotfiles/blob/master/.aliases#L7).