Thread by @benskuhn

It feels like every couple days, I learn a new Git trick. (Sigh.)

I'm going to start a running thread indexing them, because (Git's defaults are so bad that) some of them are pretty big quality of life improvements!

A fun one I noticed recently is that they added `git switch <branch>` as a more intuitive replacement for checkout. Extra fun: `switch -m` moves your uncommitted changes (no more `stash/pop` dance!). Hoping this is a sign of more UI improvements to come!

Maybe my favorite: `git log --first-parent` shows history but *only merge commits*. Even if your repo doesn't squash-merge, this still gives a clean view of your history. A former coworker liked (our use of) this so much he wrote an explainer: …om.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

(Caveat: this only works as long as you merge via `git checkout master && git merge --no-ff feature`)

As of git 2.29, `blame` also supports `--first-parent`. (Many of these improvements are recent--git is improving surprisingly quickly for 15yo software!)

If you do a codemod that touches many lines (e.g. introducing an auto-formatter) and you don't want to destroy your `git blame` info, the `blame.ignoreRevsFile` config var (or `--ignore-revs-file` option) lets you specify a list of commits to hide from blame.

If you want to work on two features at once--maybe because one of them has a long feedback cycle--then (a) try to shorten the cycle! but (b) if that fails, `git worktree` lets you maintain multiple checkouts of the same repository without having to do a full 2nd clone.

`git diff HEAD...main` shows the same diff as Github's pull request view. (Straight `git diff main` doesn't: if `main` has new commits, they show up in the diff too.)

Wave uses a monorepo, and I was trying to figure out if there's a way to hide certain parts of it on CI so that we could guarantee that the build only depends on a subset of files. Turns out there's a recently-added command, `sparse-checkout`, that can do that!

If you have files that you don't want to show up in Github's diffs, maybe because they're generated code, add them to your `.gitattributes` file with the attribute `linguist-generated=true`.

Git commands I use in helper scripts a lot:
• `rev-parse --show-toplevel`: get repo root dir
• `rev-parse <ref>`: show the commit id
• `merge-base <branch>`: show commit you branched off of
• `ls-files`: print all tracked files
• `rev-list`: print various sets of commits

Ooh, and I just learned that as of 2.29 `git bisect` understands `--first-parent` too! I think that might have been the last crucial command that was missing it?

Today I learned about `git restore`, which was released at the same time as `switch` and intended to replace the *other* use case for `checkout`. `restore FILE` discards unstaged changes, `restore -s SHA FILE` replaces FILE with the version from SHA.

PS: the coworker mentioned above is the excellent @dchudz who I forgot was on Twitter! Sorry for lack of credit! The post also exists as a prettier URL: davidchudzicki.com/posts/first-pa…

While I'm here, some more tips I remembered:

`git add -p` lets you interactively choose which parts of your file to stage/commit. If you e.g. fixed a bug in a file but also added a bunch of debug prints, with `add -p` you can commit only the fix & still keep the prints around.

I use `add -p` instead of `add .` so that I look at every change before committing, to make sure I don't accidentally commit changes intended to be temporary.

`git stash` also allows `-p` and lets you interactively select which changes to stash!

`git log -S search_term` gives you log entries whose diff contains `search_term`. If using `log --first-parent`, make sure to add `-m` so that git uses the right diff (this should be default, sigh). You prob also want `-p` to show the patch.

For many languages, Git has heuristics to try to figure out what function each line of a file is part of. You might remember these from the output of `git diff`.

Today I also learned a lesser-known fun fact: `git grep -p` will show you the function context of each matching line!

Oh man, this is a pretty great one:

https://twitter.com/kamalmarhubi/status/1348838822050721797