felipec / git-smartlist

This tool helps create typical revisions (e.g. master..@), so that you don’t have to.

For example, if you want to quickly see the commits of the current branch, you can do the following:

git log --oneline master..@

But what if your current branch is not based on master, but say "development"? You can type development..@, but it gets tedious to do this for every branch.

You could of course configure the upstream tracking branch of you current branch, and then you can just do:

git log --oneline @{upstream}..@

That’s if you have configured the upstream tracking branch.

git-smartlist can figure out what revision you would want with the from-upstream option:

git smartlist log from-upstream

Then you can create an alias for that:

git config --global alias.ls 'smartlist log from-upstream'

In order so you don’t have to keep track of all this, or type anything, git-smartlist allows you to just do:

git ls

There are five shorthands that git smartlist can help with.

Installation

Simply copy the script anywhere in your '$PATH' and make it executable, or run make install which will install it by default to your '~/bin/' directory (make sure it’s in your '$PATH').

Aliases

The best way to use git smartlist is to setup aliases to the different modes, for example, git lb would be the equivalent of git smartlist log branches.

First you will need a good log alias, for example 'lg':

git config --global alias.lg 'log --oneline --decorate --boundary --graph'

Then you can add the following to your configuration (git config --global --edit):

[alias]
  ls = smartlist lg specific
  lm = smartlist lg from
  lc = smartlist lg from-upstream
  la = smartlist lg all
  lb = smartlist lg branches
  ln = smartlist lg negate-upstreams

You can pick any name you want, and only the modes you need, but the two I use the most are:

git ls # shows only the commits of the current branch
git lb # shows the commits from all the local branches
git lb fc/ # shows the commits from the local branches that start with fc/

Usage

specific

This mode is basically saying: show me this specific branch/branches.

By default, it’s the equivalent of:

$ git smartlist echo specific
=> @{upstream}..@

If you specify a branch:

$ git smartlist echo specific feature-a
=> feature-a@{upstream}..feature-a

However, if more than one branch is specified:

$ git smartlist echo specific next feature-a
=> next feature-a --not $merge_base

So, basically it’s a mixture of from-upstream and branches.

all

This mode is equivalent to:

$ git smartlist echo all
=> --branches --remotes --not $merge_base

branches

By default this mode is the equivalent of:

$ git smartlist echo branches
=> --branches --not $merge_base

However, multiple branches can be specified

$ git smartlist echo branches next feature-a
=> next feature-a --not $merge_base

Prefixes and namespaces can be specified too:

$ git smartlist echo branches fc/
=> --branches=fc/ --not $merge_base

from

By default this mode is the equivalent of:

$ git smartlist echo from
=> master..@

But you can specify the branch:

$ git smartlist echo from feature-a
=> master..feature-a

You can also specify the starting point:

$ git smartlist echo from feature-a next
=> next..feature-a

from-upstream

By default this mode is the equivalent of:

$ git smartlist echo from-upstream
=> @{upstream}..@

If there’s no upstream configured, master is used by default.

You can also specify the branch:

$ git smartlist echo from-upstream feature-a
=> feature-a@{upstream}..feature-a

negate-upstreams

This is the equivalent of multiple from-upstream commands; all their upstreams are negated:

$ git smartlist echo negate-upstreams next feature-a
=> next@{u}..next feature@{u}..feature

Configuration

git smartlist can be configured globally, or per repository.

smartlist.merge-base

Whether to use the merge-base functionality. If not set the branches subcommand would simply do --branches.

Default: true

smartlist.friendly

Whether to use friendly names. If not set git IDs (SHA-1) are used instead of refnames.

Default: false