Back To Basics: git

Not to brag, but

I can use git (like everyone else). I’ve been using git since ~2016 and its been my primary VCS tooling throughout university. I’ve also published research that leverages git and GitHub to derive project insights. I’ve been very fond of the technology, but have come to realize that I’m not adequetly leveraging both, and thus hindering my progress.

So for today’s post, I want to optimize my git config to maximize my productivity when using the tool.

Mr. Worldwide

git can be configured globally, system-wide, or on a per-project basis. When configured globally, it affects every project for that particular user. For me, this is my preferred configuration option as I’m often working on solo-projects.

The git documentation for git config can be viewed here. If you are following along, this is the file stored at: ~/.gitconfig. Each option can be configured with git config --global --add KEY VALUE, but I’ll be displaying the output from the file itself. To start, we’ll configure git blame

“It’s Your Fault!”

git blame reports who contributed each line in a given file. This is particularly useful when identifying who contributed a specific feature, created a bug, or maliciously tampered with a file. There isn’t much to configure here, but I will turn on repeated line coloring (for repeated lines contributed in a commit), using the UNIX Epoch as the time format, and reporting author email addresses over names.

[blame]
	coloring = repeatedLines
	date = unix
	showEmail = true

Color Makes It Cooler

I typically work in terminals that support ANSI color codes, so anytime that I can add a splash of color to my development experience is pleasant. I’ve made git output most of its UI in color if possible using the ui.color config option set to auto.

[color]
    ui = auto

All My Ducks In A Column

Some of git’s commands can be formatted as columnar output. However, I don’t know which commands they are? It’s undocumented as to which commands are affected, but it does affect git blame and I like standardized output so I’m going to set it to always be on.

[column]
	ui = always

Signing Off

I wrote a Dev.to post on why you should sign your commits with GPG, and I still stand by that post today. While tedious to setup and maintain across workstations, it does provide a layer of collaborator authentication.

[commit]
	gpgSign = true

Speed Demon

Some of the work that I do involves assessing the quality of software repositories longitudinally. Thus, I’m often checking out many commits sequentially in a git repository. Therefore, when I heard about the core.fsmonitor config option, I was ecstatic. This option, “can speed up Git commands that need to refresh the Git index (e.g. git status) in a working directory with many files. The built-in monitor eliminates the need to install and maintain an external third-party tool” (Source).

In my testing, I found that when checking out 500 commits sequentially from the numpy repository, disabling this feature required 13.8 seconds to complete on average across 10 runs. Enabling this feature took on average 11.2 seconds across 10 runs. Not an astounding difference in testing, but if core.fsmonitor can save me 2.6 seconds per 500 commits, on a project with 37,775 commits that could add up to a time savings of 211.54 seconds, or 3 minutes and 32 seconds! More testing on my end needs to be done if this feature scales linearly, but for now I will keep it on and use version 1 of the tool.

[core]
        fsmonitor = true
        fsmonitorHookVersion = 1

Core Defaults

In addition to the fsmonitor config, I also leverage nvim and less as my editor and pager of choice.

[core]
        fsmonitor = true
        fsmonitorHookVersion = 1
        editor = nvim
        pager = less

Optimizing Nodes And Edges

git can create a graph of how every commit relates to one another. This allows for efficiently applying patches to a commit once checked out. However, this has to be done manually with git commit-graph write. We can automate some of this by enabling the commit graph to be written anytime git fetch is called.

[fetch]
	writeCommitGraph = true

Don’t Forget About The User!

Finally, I’ll configure my name and email for git.

[user]
	name = Nicholas M. Synovic
	email = ***

Wrapping Up

I know that I’ve skipped over many different configuration options that git has to offer. So consider this post and my config a jumping off point that you can extend.

My full config is:

[blame]
        coloring = repeatedLines
	    date = unix
        showEmail = true
[color]
        ui = auto
[column]
        ui = always
[commit]
        gpgSign = true
[core]
        fsmonitor = true
        fsmonitorHookVersion = 1
        editor = nvim
        pager = less
[fetch]
	writeCommitGraph = true
[user]
	name = Nicholas M. Synovic
	email = ***