new git learnings

bartman
2024-02-14

watching the founder of github talk about git.

here is what I learned:

have git branch report branches in reverse change order

  $ git config --global branch.sort -committerdate

the builtin git column is a more useful column command

  $ seq 1 10 | git column --mode=column --width=15 --padding=2
  1   5   9
  2   6   10
  3   7
  4   8

git can sign commits with ssh keys

  $ git config gpg.format ssh
  $ git config user.signingkey ~/.ssh/key.pub
  $ git commit -S

or even push with signature, if the server supports it

  $ git push --signed

git can do background tasks from cronjob, if enabled on a repo
```
  $ git maintenance start
```
git log --graph is expensive, but can be made faster by enabling a cache of the graph at fetch time
```
  $ git config --global fetch.writeCommitGraph true
```
git fsmonitor is a daemon that can run in the background, wich uses inotify to track changed files
significantly speeds up git status operations, and needs watchman installed
```
  $ sudo apt install watchman
  $ git config core.fsmonitor true
  $ git config core.untrackedcache true
```
shallow clones can be done such that history is downloaded, but not blobs from historical (non-HEAD) commits
also possible to skip blobs and trees, so get commits only
git will pull down what it needs dynamically
```
  $ git clone --filter=blob:none
  $ git clone --filter=tree:0
```
sparse checkouts, a way to clone everything, but only checkout parts of it
```
  $ git sparse-checkout mydir myotherdir
```

Tags: