Aliases and config

An alias is a config entry that renames a command — write it with git config. Under the hood an alias is just a key under the alias. section. The classic short forms:

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

Now git co main runs git checkout main. These live in your global config, so they follow you across every repo on the machine. Define them once and the savings compound over thousands of invocations.

Aliases can expand into multi-flag commands — the famous one is a graph log. An alias value can be a whole argument string, which is how everyone ends up with a one-word pretty history:

git config --global alias.lg "log --oneline --graph --decorate --all"
git lg     # the full annotated commit graph, in two letters

This is the single highest-value alias most engineers add: a readable, branch-aware history view that would be tedious to type in full every time you want to see where things stand.

Prefix an alias with ! to run a shell command, not just a git subcommand. When you start an alias value with !, git runs it through the shell, so you can chain commands, call other tools, or build small scripts:

git config --global alias.last "log -1 HEAD"          # plain git subcommand
git config --global alias.unstage "reset HEAD --"     # plain git subcommand
git config --global alias.pushup "!git push -u origin HEAD"   # shell: works on any branch

The ! form unlocks anything the shell can do, but it also means the alias is no longer a pure git command — it runs from the repository root and can call non-git programs, so keep these readable.

A handful of config options remove most daily friction. These are the settings experienced engineers set on a fresh machine before doing anything else:

git config --global pull.rebase true          # rebase on pull instead of making merge bubbles
git config --global rebase.autostash true     # auto-stash dirty changes around a rebase
git config --global push.autoSetupRemote true # first push sets upstream automatically
git config --global init.defaultBranch main   # new repos start on 'main'
git config --global rerere.enabled true       # remember how you resolved a conflict, replay it
git config --global column.ui auto            # tidy multi-column output for lists
git config --global core.editor "code --wait" # use your editor for commit messages

Each one quietly deletes a recurring annoyance: no more merge bubbles from routine pulls, no manual --set-upstream, no re-resolving the same conflict twice (rerere).