Tag: git

How to demystify Git commands using Visualizing Git – 081

A couple of githubbers (aka those who work at github) put together an interactive visualization of git commands (as an open source project). For whatever reason, being able to play with this particular visualization tool allowed git things to click big-time, which you’ll see more in tomorrow’s tip.

http://git-school.github.io/visualizing-git/

A couple of commands to know that are only for the visualization tool itself and nothing to do with Git:

“undo” – undoes your last command to the tool. not a git command.
“clear” – gets you back to a clear Free Explore state – see the dropdown

Note that the tool doesn’t have a concept of

staging or a working directory – so no getting to practice the differences between `git reset –hard` or `git reset –mixed` or `git reset –soft`
interactive rebase

But like I said before, just being able to visualize what on earth is happening has been a huge lightbulb moment.

They are taking pull requests, so if you know of a good example, why not put together an example demo script for their examples folder?

How to use the arrows in the View History graphs in Visual Studio – 078

There was a saying back in Mountaineering Search and Rescue* in Seattle about why you should *never* pack cotton-based clothes in your cold-weather gear. It went like, “No matter how far down you pack cotton in your bag, water will find it.” I feel the same about Visual Studio. “If there is a clickable pixel somewhere in Visual Studio, no matter how small or obscure you place it, I will find it.”

As I was prep’ing yesterday’s tip, I noticed that the View History graph showed these arrows pointing in various directions. TBH I had to ask someone to explain what the arrows meant.

If you click on this downward-facing arrow, a connector line will appear!

The connector line will go all the way down off screen until it reaches its commit.

The idea behind these arrows is to show you that they connect to a commit that’s not currently visible on the screen.

BTW, the arrows can also point upwards as well, reaching back up to its counterpart in the graph.

*So yeah, about search and rescue, well over 10 years ago, genius here wanted to volunteer to learn more about hiking and volunteer my time and whatever skills to helping out, since I love the outdoors so much. Only one small problem… I hate the cold! And I had never camped in the cold before, and at that time anything below 70 was considered cold to my NOLA standards. Anyways, it was 27 degrees one particular weekend of training. I made it the first night, but was never able to get to sleep. The second night I dropped out so my partner (who was kicking butt and taking names) could find other same skill-level people so she could pass. But yeah I still laugh at the thought of me thinking I could go find people lost in the woods when I get lost driving down the street!

How to use `git log –first-parent` to only view commits that happened on a given branch – 077

First Parent Only via Visual Studio – View History

By default the View History option in Visual Studio (from Changes – Action – View History or from the Status bar – <branch name> – View History) shows all commits, regardless whether the commit occurred in a separate branch or on the current branch. Let’s assume master is the current branch for simplicity. I’m using Open Live Writer as an example.

Shout out to http://marcgg.com/blog/2015/08/04/git-first-parent-log/ who has a great write-up on when you’d use –first-parent.

Right now on Twitter, developers are sharing how much they have to look up things. “Hi, my name is Sara. When I look at the Git history graph, I see a praying mantis.”

If you only want to see the changes that occurred on master (or whatever branch you are currently viewing the history for), you can click the Show First Parent Only button.

Now you’ll only see commits that occurred directly on the branch itself (and not on another branch that got merged into the current branch).

Command Line git log –first-parent

Rinse and repeat for command line.

From yesterday’s tip, if you run git log –graph –pretty=oneline –graph –abbrev-commit

You’ll see all of the commits from different branches.

Now add the –first-parent option at the end: git log –graph –pretty=oneline –graph –abbrev-commit –first-parent

Thanks again to http://marcgg.com/blog/2015/08/04/git-first-parent-log/ for the great description! As I said above, I just see a praying mantis. 🙂

How to view a git log graph from the command line that looks like Visual Studio View History – 076

It feels like there are 100 different ways to do a git log. Here’s one possible way… I’m using the OpenLiveWriter repo to demo since it has lots of branching going on.

P.S. The way to exit these log commands is to press ‘q’ when the colon appears, if you are following along at home.

let’s start with git log –graph.