What’s the best Git tip you’ve ever learned?

What’s the best Git tip you’ve ever learned?

Mastering Git often comes down to learning its less obvious but incredibly powerful features

One highly effective tip is to use git worktree for working on multiple branches simultaneously

Instead of constantly stashing and switching branches a git worktree allows you to have a separate directory for a new branch

This lets you run tests in one branch while actively coding in another without any context switching

Another invaluable command is git reflog

The reference log tracks when the tips of branches and other references were updated in your local repository

If you accidentally reset or rebase away a commit you can use git reflog to find its hash and restore it

For cleaning up a messy commit history before sharing interactive rebase is essential

Using git rebase i allows you to squash commits reword messages and reorder changes creating a clear narrative

To understand what changes are about to be merged use git log main (your branch)

This command shows all the commits that are in your current branch but not yet in the main branch

For finding which commit introduced a bug git bisect is a lifesaver

It performs a binary search through your history helping you quickly pinpoint the exact commit that caused an issue

Leverage git hooks to automate tasks

You can run scripts automatically before or after events like commits pushes and rebases ensuring consistency

Remember that git restore is the modern way to discard uncommitted changes in your working directory

It is more intuitive than the older git checkout and git reset commands for this specific purpose

Finally a deep understanding of the difference between git fetch and git pull is crucial

Git fetch safely downloads new data without altering your work while git pull performs a fetch followed by a merge

These tips focus on harnessing Git’s built in power for efficiency and control