Boost Your Git DX update out now

Praise

The book has sold ~750 copies since its release last October. It has a five-star rating and many positive reviews listed on Gumroad, such as:

"This book is simply amazing, from page 1 the content in invaluable with tips and tricks that will make any dev more productive. Thank you Adam for the great book. "

—Gary Jarrel on Gumroad

“This book transformed my day-to-day operations. As a self-taught engineer, I have found myself starved for mentorship, and Boost Your Git DX has been my most influential mentor in 2023.”

—Lance Goyke on his blog

“Adam's written two books before (Boost Your Django DX; Speed Up Your Django Tests) — both paid for themselves within the first hour of my purchase. This one's a no-brainer, too.”

—Justin Duke on Twitter

Free samples

I’ve written 44 blog posts on Git, many of which are included in the book. Here’s a selection:

• Set up a global ignore file
• Enable autocorrect
• Automatically create upstream branches
• The basics of git bisect
• Undo a rebase with git reflog

Changelog

• Added git log section “Collapse merge commits with --first-parent”.
• Added “Command commonalities” section “Condense output with column.ui=auto”.
• Added git blame section “Ignore code copying with -C (-C -C)”.
• Added ripgrep section “Hyperlink file paths with --hyperlink-format” and added --hyperlink-format default to the sample configuration file.
• Moved the section on git switch - (switch to previous branch) into a general commit reference section.
• Added subsections to the section on Git aliases for shell commands covering multiline aliases and forcing autocomplete.
• Expanded the git log section “Filter by commit message content with --grep” to cover --invert-grep.
• Expanded the git merge section “Enable rerere to reuse recorded (conflict) resolutions“ to cover rerere.autoUpdate.
• Expanded the git push section “Force push safely with --force-with-lease and --force-if-includes” to cover how git push -f may still be needed sometimes.
• Made many smaller edits. Thanks to all readers who suggested improvements.

Table of contents

1. Introduction
   1. About this book
      • Read in any order
      • Example commands and resources
      • End-of-chapter feedback links
   2. Acknowledgements
   3. Changelog
2. Global configuration
   1. Git’s configuration files
      • Store global configuration in ~/.config/git
      • Migrate from legacy ~/.gitconfig to ~/.config/git/config
      • Read and change options with git config
      • Trace options with git config --show-scope and --show-origin
   2. Basic configuration
      • Set your name and email address
      • Use a different email address based on the working directory
      • Use your favourite editor
      • Set up a global ignore file
      • Improve the default colourization with color.* options
      • Enable help.autoCorrect to fix mistyped commands
   3. Back up your configuration
      • Set up your dotfiles repository
      • Save ongoing configuration changes
      • Track other configuration files
      • Restore your backup
3. Aliases
   1. Shell aliases
      • Create shell aliases with alias <name>=<command>
      • List aliases with alias
      • Bypass aliases with \
   2. Git aliases
      • Create an alias that runs a single Git command
      • Create an alias that runs shell commands
      • Add a git git alias to help when you lose attention
4. Shell configuration
   1. oh-my-zsh: instant enhancements and aliases
      • Install oh-my-zsh
      • Some handy Git aliases
      • Learn your aliases on the go with zsh-you-should-use
   2. Starship: a powerful, performant prompt
      • Install Starship
      • Personalize your prompt
      • Read Git state at a glance with Starship’s prompt
5. Shell tools
   1. Less: the power pager
      • Activate lesser-known features with the LESS environment variable
      • Scroll and search with keyboard shortcuts
      • Search forwards with / and backwards with ?
      • Use Less with more Git commands
   2. delta: dapper diff display
      • Set up Git to use delta
      • How delta enhances Git’s output
      • Temporarily disable delta
      • Run delta directly as a diff tool
   3. ripgrep: rip-roaringly rapid grep
      • Install ripgrep
      • Search basics
      • Change case sensitivity with -i or -S
      • Hyperlink file paths with --hyperlink-format
      • Unrestrict searches with specific options or -u
      • Filter by file extensions with -g or -t
      • Configure ripgrep in ~/.config/ripgreprc
      • Combine with delta for lovely formatting
6. Repository configuration
   1. Default branch naming
      • Use main for your default branches
      • Alias master as main in legacy repositories
   2. Ignore files
      • The basics of ignore files
      • Ignore file tips
      • Commands for debugging ignore files
7. Hooks and the pre-commit framework
   1. Git hooks
   2. pre-commit: Universal Hook Manager
      • Install pre-commit
      • Configure pre-commit
      • Update hooks with pre-commit autoupdate
      • Extra protection from pre-commit-hooks
      • ripsecrets: Protect your secrets
      • Find more hooks
      • Skip hooks temporarily with --no-verify or SKIP
      • oh-my-zsh plugin
      • pre-commit ci: continuous integration for your hooks
8. Command commonalities
   1. Common options
      • Get short or long help with -h or --help
      • Condense output with column.ui=auto
      • Override configuration with -c
      • Use repositories in other directories with -C
   2. Commit SHAs
      • SHA abbreviation
      • Show and copy the current commit SHA
      • SHA-1 versus SHA-256
   3. Commit references
      • Single commit references
      • Commit range references
   4. Date specifications
      • Top formats
   5. Pathspecs
      • Top pathspec syntaxes
      • Using pathspecs
9. Branches and worktree
   1. Switching branches
      • Use git switch instead of git checkout
      • Top git switch commands
   2. Listing branches
      • Basic branch listing commands
      • Sort by recency and switch with fzf (fuzzy finder)
      • Find branches missing a given commit
   3. Deleting old branches
      • Configure your Git host to delete merged branches
      • Enable automatic pruning of remote branches
      • Add an alias to delete local branches
   4. worktree
      • worktree basics
      • Using a worktree to write a hotfix
10. status and diff
    1. status
       • Enable denser output with --short or status.short
       • Shorten long format by disabling advice with advice.statusHints
       • Hide untracked files with -uno
       • List changed files with git diff --name-only
    2. diff
       • Improve diff generation with diff.algorithm=histogram
       • See more context with diff.interHunkContext
       • Enable language-specific hunk headings
       • Use ExifTool to diff media files
       • Use Pandoc to diff document files
       • Make file paths complete with diff.noprefix
11. add and restore
    1. add (and mv and rm)
       • The three commands: add, mv, and rm
       • Add interactively with git add -p
       • Add all changes with git add -u or -A
    2. restore
       • Use git restore instead of checkout and reset
       • Top git restore commands
       • Restore interactively with -p
12. commit and reset
    1. commit
       • Improve commit message editing with verbose mode and “scissors” cleanup
       • Use -m to set the message without your editor
       • Use -a or an alias to add all files and commit
       • Declare coauthors in co-authored-by trailers
       • Update the previous commit with --amend
       • Create empty commits with --allow-empty
    2. reset
       • Undo commits and keep their changes with --mixed or --soft
       • Undo commits and discard their changes with --keep (not --hard)
       • Useful commit references for resetting
13. stash and apply
    1. stash
       • stash basics
       • Push stash entries with a description with -m
       • Stash selected files by pathspec
       • Stash only unstaged changes with -k or staged changes with -S
       • Stash selected hunks interactively with -p
       • Automatically stash during merge and rebase with the autostash options
    2. apply
       • apply basics
       • Send and receive patches by copy and paste
       • apply outside of a Git repository
14. push and pull
    1. push
       • Automatically create upstream branches with push.autoSetupRemote
       • Force push safely with --force-with-lease and --force-if-includes
       • Push a commit and its annotated tags with --follow-tags
    2. pull
       • Rebase divergent branches when you pull with pull.rebase
       • Make a branch pull from and push to different remotes
15. merge and rebase
    1. merge
       • Improve conflict display with the zdiff3 style
       • Open all conflicted files with the edit-unmerged alias
       • Enable rerere to reuse recorded (conflict) resolutions
       • Pick one side of conflicts with git restore or git merge -X
    2. rebase
       • Control rebasing with interactive mode (-i)
       • Top interactive mode actions
       • Squash and rebase a branch with --keep-base
       • Rebase stacked branches with --update-refs
       • Run a command at each step with -x
       • Automatically fix up commits with rebase.autoSquash
       • Drop already-merged commits with --empty drop
16. log and reflog
    1. log
       • Three levels of detail: --oneline, --stat, and --patch
       • Reveal branching structure with --graph
       • Collapse merge commits with --first-parent
       • Filter by changes with the pickaxe options -S and -G
       • Filter by commit message content with --grep
       • Restrict time with --since and --until
       • Sort oldest first with --reverse
       • Follow changes to a single file with --follow
       • Follow changes to a code block with -L
       • Reveal hidden changes in merge commits with --cc
    2. reflog
       • reflog basics
       • Restore a deleted branch
       • Undo a commit amendment
       • Undo a rebase
17. blame and bisect
    1. blame
       • blame basics
       • Blame a code block with -L
       • Ignore mass-change commits with blame.ignoreRevsFile
       • Ignore code copying with -C (-C -C)
    2. bisect
       • bisect basics
       • Mark a commit as untestable with git bisect skip
       • Automate testing with git bisect run
       • Automate testing of performance regressions
18. Outroduction
    1. Honourable mentions
       • Git features
       • Extra tools
       • Just for fun
    2. Further reading
       • Git updates
       • Git under the hood
    3. Thank you