My terminal setup and commands I use on a daily basis when working with GitHub

When working on an application stored on GitHub, there are some commands which I use on a daily basis which help make me more efficient. This article shares with you some of these commands which I use.

Setup

Terminal Choice: Warp

I recommend Warp Terminal as it provides some useful tooltips and pre-filling which makes writing commands more efficient.

oh-my-zsh

I also use oh-my-zsh to help with features such as viewing the current git branch, and providing certain git aliases too, which are covered below.

GitHub CLI

GitHub CLI is also a great tool I make use of for interacting with GitHub on features such as Pull Requests.

Daily Commands

Git Aliases

As mentioned above, oh-my-zsh provides a number of different Git alises. Below are some of the ones I use most frequently:

• gl - Alias for git pull
• gc - Alias for git commit
  • e.g gc -m "my commit message"
• gp - Alias for git push
• gpsup - Alias for git push --set-upstream origin $(git_current_branch)

There’s also a lot more available via the link below:

https://kapeli.com/cheat_sheets/Oh-My-Zsh_Git.docset/Contents/Resources/Documents/index

git add -p

git add -p allows you to preview your changes before adding to your next commit.

This is a really useful way of approving your changes one by one, and quickly selecting which should be added, without having to leave your terminal.

Open Pull Request Alias

GitHub CLI has a handy command for opening the current branches Pull Request, or taking you to the creation form if one doesn’t already exist:

gh pr create --web

This in itself is already really useful, however I have an alias in my .zshrc file to make this slightly faster:

alias pr="gh pr create --web"

This way I can simply run the command pr to open or create a new Pull Request for my current git branch.

Putting these together I can then quickly commit, push and open a pull request using the following:

git add -p
gc -m "commit message"
gp
pr

I hope these tips have been useful. Please feel free to leave any questions or comments.