1. Installing autocompletion
2. Defining aliases
1. For common commands
2. To print the commits graph
3. Using a git GUI client

When getting started with Git, you don't always know there exist some trick to make you more productive with it. Here are a few, most of which are already in the official documentation.

Installing autocompletion

When working with git from the command-line, it's very useful to have autocompletion for your branch/remote names, git commands, etc. Fortunately, there is a bash script for that.

To achieve this, download this file, put it under your home directory under the name .git-completion.bash, then reference it from your bash initialization file (either ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc) :

source ~/.git-completion.bash

Defining aliases

For common commands

Commands like commit, branch, `checkout are so common that it's useful to type them with fewer characters. To do so, you create git aliases by typing the following commands in a terminal :

git config --global alias.co checkout   
git config --global alias.br branch   
git config --global alias.ci commit   
git config --global alias.st status

Once you have done this, you can type co, br, ci, st every time you would normaly type checkout, branch, commit, status.

To print the commits graph

The following alias will enable you print a pretty representation of the commits graph in your terminal window :

git config --global alias.lg "log --graph --all --pretty=format:'%C(bold)%h%Creset -%C(auto)%d%Creset %s %C(green dim)(%cr)%Creset %C(ul)<%an>"  
`

Now, typing git lg in your repository will print something like this :

The effect of setting aliases is to modify your ~/.gitconfig file, which should now look like this :

   [user]  
       name = Valentin Waeselynck  
       email = val@bandsquare.fr  
  [alias]  
       lg = log --graph --all --pretty=format:'%C(bold)%h%Creset -%C(auto)%d%Creset %s %C(green dim)(%cr)%Creset %C(ul)<%an>'  
       co = checkout  
       br = branch  
       ci = commit  
       st = status  
  [core]  
       editor = vim   
  [filter "media"]  
       clean = git media clean %f  
       smudge = git media smudge %f  
       required = true  

Using a git GUI client

Working from the command line with the above config is enough for 95% of my everyday work. But sometimes, I need a better visualisation tool (e.g for diffs) in my local environment, so I also use SourceTree.