Git tips and tricks

Oct 17, 2021 git

Various git workflows I follow and lesser known features.

Merging a feature branch

The workflow I always follow is:

$ git checkout master
$ git pull
$ git checkout feature-branch
$ git rebase master # fix any conflicts
$ git checkout master
$ git merge feature-branch --no-ff

First I pull the most recent changes to the branch I want to merge the feature branch into (in this case master). I’ll then rebase the feature branch with master to apply any new commits from master and highlight any conflicts, so they can be fixed - this avoids running into merge conflicts when merging into master and therefore having to fix on the master branch and push a “Fix merge conflicts” commit.

I’ll then proceed with the merge, --no-ff ensures a merge commit is always created which makes the scenario where the changes need reverting a lot easier (you can just revert the merge commit which will revert all the commits added when the merge was made)

Interactive rebase

Command: git rebase -i|--interactive

Rebase all the commits up to, but not including, the given <commit-hash>

$ git rebase -i <commit-hash>

Rebase the last n commits

$ git rebase -i HEAD~n

It will then open a list of the selected commits in your text editor where you can apply commands. The most common commands I find using during the rebase are: fixup, reword & drop

Note: Rebasing rewrites the commit history for any commits selected, so you’ll likely only want to apply to commits that haven’t been pushed or are working alone on a feature branch where you can git push --force

Viewing changes in the console

Command: git show

When committing small fixes straight to the master branch I typically like to sanity check the changes I have just staged and committed as pushing some unwelcome file to master is a bit embarrassing.

$ git show        # Shows the diff of the most recent commit
$ git show HEAD~1 #           """         commit prior to the first...