4 tips to improve your git skills

Git is a must-know tool for any modern developer and stepping up your skills can only help be more productive.

So here are a few tips to upgrade your git skills.

Efficient switching between branches

Let say you are working between the main branch and the feature-12 branch.

Now, let say you have some uncommitted work one on feature-12 but you need to go back to main. Just stash it!

git stash

you can also add a stash message:

git stash -m "start implementing feature-12"

Now you can checkout main or do whatever you need to. Ready to re-apply changes?

git stash pop

It will re-apply the last stashed changes!

Bonus:

To quickly switch back to the latest used branch:

git checkout -

Reset to the previous state

What happen when you committed and pushed 2 commits and you realized they are complete garbage?

Git reset got your back. Simply:

git reset --hard HEAD~2

and you are back 2 commits behind. To push it:

git push --force-with-lease

Amend commit

What if you just committed your main.py file, but you decided a line was missing from it.

No need to do a new commit, simple amend your last commit:

git commit main.py --amend 

Notes: This will prompt you to edit the commit message. If you want to keep the same message, simply do:

git commit main.py --amend --no-edit

Notes:

Using git amend may require to force push the commit. If the push didn't work, simply do:

git push --force-with-lease

Combine add and commit

Here is a quick one. Say you want to create a new commit for your main.py file.

Do:

git commit main.py -m “update main.py”

Instead of:

git add main.py
git commit -m “update main.py”

additional tip:

If you want to push at the same time, simply do:

git commit -m “update main.py” && git push