Some quick Git tips

If you want to save yourself some time when using Git, try making a few changes to your .gitconfig.

My current non-default recommendations are:

[pull]
	rebase = preserve
[branch]
	autosetupmerge = always
[remote]
	pushdefault = origin

What do these do?

rebase = preserve

This means that when we run a git pull it rebases any of our changes on top of what was pulled, whilst preserving our own merging structure.

autosetupmerge = always

This means that when we do git checkout -b newbranch from develop, newbranch is set to track develop.

pushdefault = origin

Normally when we branch off develop, make a change, commit, and try to push, we find that our new branch does not have a remote branch, and git prompts us to set one. This automates that process, so one can branch, commit, and immediately push to origin.

What’s the upshot?

I can git checkout -b mynewfeature to create a new feature, git push to push, and git pull origin develop to grab new changes that others have made, whilst not worrying about creating unnecessary merge commits.

Obviously these are only defaults - on feature branches etc. you probably want to be using merges.