Ihab Khattab

Git Habits That Actually Stuck With Me

2 min read

Git Tricks I Use Every Day

Small habits that add up to a much cleaner workflow. Here is what I actually use day to day.

Never Force Push Blindly

Use git push --force-with-lease instead of git push --force. It refuses to overwrite if someone else pushed to the branch since your last fetch. One flag, prevents a lot of damage.

git push --force-with-lease

Sort Branches by Most Recent

Alphabetical branch lists are useless. This shows what you were just working on at the top.

git config --global branch.sort -committerdate

Reset a Single File to Main

Accidentally changed a file you did not mean to touch? This resets only that file to what it looks like on main. Everything else in your branch stays untouched.

git checkout main -- a.txt

Trigger CI Without a Real Change

Pipeline failed for a flaky reason and you just need a rerun? This creates a commit with no file changes, just enough to push and kick off a new run.

gc --allow-empty -m "ci: rebuild"

Note: gc is my Oh My Zsh alias for git commit -v, more on that below.

Use Drop Instead of Squash for Empty Commits

I used to remove empty rebuild commits by squashing them, then manually editing the final commit message to remove the noise. Recently I realized drop is the right tool. In interactive rebase, mark them as d and they disappear completely. No message cleanup needed.

Interactive rebase todo list with an empty “ci: rebuild” commit marked as d (drop) git rebase example

More details: git-rebase interactive mode

Stop Merge Commits From Polluting Your History

Stops accidental merge commits when pulling. Keeps history linear.

git config --global pull.rebase true

More details: Merging vs. Rebasing

Clean Up Merged Local Branches

After merging PRs, local branches pile up. This one-liner deletes all that are already merged. Run it after every sprint.

git branch --merged | grep -v "^\*\|main\|master" | xargs git branch -d

Push to Current Branch Automatically

No more “fatal: no upstream branch” errors. Git will create and track the remote branch automatically on first push.

git config --global push.default current
git config --global push.autoSetupRemote true

Stop Git From Littering .orig Files After a Merge

By default git keeps a backup of every conflicted file after resolving a merge. This turns that off.

git config --global mergetool.keepBackup false

Fix Line Ending Issues on Cross-Platform Teams

Normalizes line endings on commit without touching what gets checked out. Saves a lot of noisy diffs on teams mixing Mac and Windows.

git config --global core.autocrlf input

More details: Configuring Git to handle line endings

Replace Diff With Delta

The default git diff output is hard to read. Delta adds syntax highlighting, line numbers, and side-by-side mode. Use n and N to jump between diff sections while reviewing.

A TypeScript diff rendered by delta with syntax highlighting and word-level changes git diff after using Delta

git config --global core.pager delta
git config --global interactive.diffFilter "delta --color-only"

A Better Git Log

git lg gives you a coloured, graphed commit history that is actually readable.

Terminal output of git lg showing a coloured commit graph with branches, merges, relative dates, and authors git lg

Oh My Zsh Git Aliases

Most of my short commands come from the Oh My Zsh git plugin. The ones I use constantly:

  • ga . = git add .
  • gc = git commit -v
  • gco = git checkout
  • gpf = git push --force-with-lease
  • gpf! = git push --force
  • gd = git diff
  • gb = git branch

gc is worth calling out specifically. It opens your editor for the commit message but also shows the full diff below it, so you can see exactly what you are committing while you write the message.

Which of these did you not know about?

← All posts