Chapter 21 — Tips & Tricks

A collection of useful Git techniques that don't fit neatly into other chapters.

Aliases

Example: Set up useful aliases

git config --global alias.st "status -sb"
git config --global alias.co "checkout"
git config --global alias.br "branch"
git config --global alias.ci "commit"
git config --global alias.lg "log --oneline --graph --all --decorate"
git config --global alias.last "log -1 HEAD --stat"
git config --global alias.unstage "restore --staged"
git config --global alias.amend "commit --amend --no-edit"

Now you can type:

git st        # instead of git status -sb
git lg        # beautiful graph log
git unstage file.js

Ignoring Files Locally

Example: Ignore a file without changing .gitignore

echo "my-local-notes.txt" >> .git/info/exclude

🧠 .git/info/exclude works like .gitignore but isn't tracked, so it's private to your machine.

Example: Temporarily ignore a tracked file

git update-index --assume-unchanged config/local.yml

Undo it:

git update-index --no-assume-unchanged config/local.yml

Finding Things

Example: Find which commit deleted a file

git log --diff-filter=D --summary -- path/to/deleted-file.js

Example: Find all commits by a specific author

git log --author="Dariush" --oneline

Example: Find all commits touching a specific function

git log -p -S "calculateTotal" -- "*.js"

Example: Find all TODO comments added recently

git diff HEAD~10..HEAD -S "TODO"

Cleaning Up

Example: Remove all merged branches

git branch --merged main | grep -v "main" | xargs git branch -d

Example: Garbage collect

git gc --prune=now

This cleans up unnecessary files and optimizes the repository.

Working with Large Files

Example: See the largest files in history

git rev-list --objects --all \
  | git cat-file --batch-check='%(objecttype) %(objectname) %(objectsize) %(rest)' \
  | awk '/^blob/ {print $3, $4}' \
  | sort -rn \
  | head -10

Example: Set up Git LFS for large files

git lfs install
git lfs track "*.psd"
git lfs track "*.mp4"
git add .gitattributes
git commit -m "Track large files with Git LFS"

Useful One-Liners

Example: Count commits per author

git shortlog -sn --all

Example: See which files change most often

git log --pretty=format: --name-only | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10

Example: See total lines added/removed by author

git log --author="Dariush" --pretty=tformat: --numstat \
  | awk '{ add += $1; del += $2 } END { printf "Added: %s Removed: %s\n", add, del }'

Example: Create an archive of the current HEAD

git archive --format=tar.gz --prefix=project-v1.0/ HEAD > project-v1.0.tar.gz

Example: Show a file as it was 5 commits ago

git show HEAD~5:path/to/file.js

Sparse Checkout

When a repo is huge and you only need a few directories:

Example: Clone only specific directories

git clone --filter=blob:none --sparse https://github.com/big/repo.git
cd repo
git sparse-checkout set src/frontend docs

🧠 What happened? Git cloned the repo's metadata but only downloaded files in src/frontend and docs. Everything else is downloaded on demand.

Git Maintenance

For large repositories, enable background maintenance:

git maintenance start

This runs hourly tasks like prefetching, garbage collection, and commit-graph updates.

← Chapter 20: Git Hooks · Back to Table of Contents →