Today I learned how to create git aliases in my .gitconfig file.

Git alias for quick commit & push

Today I learned (or was reminded, really) that you can create aliases for git commands. For example, for this blog I often run these two commands in sequence:

git commit -m "Update"
git push

So, I realised I could set an alias, like git cp, to do this for me! I first learned how to create git aliases from Adam Johnson's โ€œBoost Your Git DXโ€, but the very short version of one way in which this can work is by modifying the section [alias] of your .gitconfig file.

You should place the file .gitconfig in your home directory (in case it isn't there yet) and then you can add this to its contents:

[alias]
    cp = !git commit -m "Update" && git push
    facp = !git add . && git cp

This makes it so that git cp is equivalent to running git commit -m "Update" && git push and git facp (fast add, commit, and push) is equivalent to running git add . followed by git cp.

By saving around three seconds every time I commit things on my blog, I expect these two aliases to save me a full minute by next month! Maybe in a couple of years they will have saved me enough time to make up for the time I lost creating the aliases and writing a blog article about them.

To conclude, the diagram below contains the information of this article in a diagram:

A diagram showing that a section `alias` can be added to the git configuration file `.gitconfig` in order to create command aliases.

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