My git aliases

As a (former?) mercurial fan I find the default git commands too long. Just compare git status to hg st. You could argue that this is a small thing, but I’m a slow typer and it just annoys me to type out status when I use it a bazillion times a day.

Luckily git has aliases which makes it easy for you to make new shorthands (or new) commands. I used some aliases from Brendan Forster’s blog on this very topic (sorry - no longer available). Here they are (ready to paste into your git config file):

[alias]
st = status
co = checkout
ci = commit
lg = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr)%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative

Or if you want the commands to make git put them in the global git config file:

git config --global alias.st "status"
git config --global alias.co "checkout"
git config --global alias.ci "commit"
git config --global alias.lg "log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr)%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative"

At least git usability is now better than the default.