Git on Jake Worth

Git Apply Diff

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 16:51:25 -0500

One of my favorite Git tricks is shoveling changes to a Git diff and then applying them later.

Things I Check Before Opening a PR

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 14:58:34 -0500

What is a programmer but a series of PRs (pull requests)? I optimize PRs to introduce the best code I can, be easy to review, and document my work so I can make sense of it in the future. Here are some things I always check before opening a PR.

Git Porcelain and Plumbing 🚽

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 16:53:11 -0500

Git has two kinds of commands: “porcelain” and “plumbing”.

Timestamped Branch

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 16:53:29 -0500

Git prevents branches with the same name. But sometimes, I want to re-use a name! Here’s my workaround.

Why Keep Binaries Out of Version Control

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 10:48:23 -0500

“Keep binaries out of version control” is a truth I’ve always held, but I recently learned more about why.

"Don't Stay Stuck" Digital Guide Launch

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 09:33:04 -0400

I’m proud to announce the launch of my digital guide to software debugging, Don’t Stay Stuck: A Debugging Guide for Rising Engineers!

Git Apply a Commit in Reverse

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 14:48:55 -0400

Sometimes I’ll be looking at a Git commit online, and want to put my dev environment in a world where the commit is un-applied. This can be achieved by applying it in reverse.

Show How A File Is Ignored In Git

Fri, 31 May 2024 10:21:44 -0400

Today I solved a mystery: a file was being Git-ignored in a new project that didn’t have a .gitignore. Here’s me learning this by trying and failing to add it:

$ git add destroy.sh
The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
destroy.sh

This output tells me some .gitignore is telling Git to ignore my script. Another way to confirm this is the check-ignore command:

$ git check-ignore destroy.sh
destroy.sh

The output here is the match; a file named destroy.sh is indeed being ignored. But how? We can answer that question with the -v flag:

Apply a Patch in Reverse

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 09:11:39 -0400

Need to undo a code change? You could revert. Or, you could apply the patch without creating a commit. That’s what I want to do much of the time.

Use git apply with the -R (reverse) flag:

git show 8cc13b1 | git apply -R

All the changes from 8cc13b1 get applied to your working directory. In a large commit, do this tactically by limiting to just one file or directory.

git show 8cc13b1 src/fileToRevert.ts | git apply -R

How to Identify the Breaking Commit With Git Bisect

Tue, 17 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Some code is broken, and you can’t figure out why. Maybe there are a lot of changes, and identifying the breaking change seems impossible. Or, maybe you’re curious about how things break in your organization. The tool you need is git-bisect.

Commit Part of a File in Git

Fri, 06 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

You’ve been working on a big set of changes, and haven’t committed to Git yet. Now, you want to commit some, but not all, changes to a file. Let’s look at adding patches.

Force with Lease

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 21:21:44 -0400

When I rebase, I force-push altered history using the flag --force-with-lease instead of the commonly-used --force.

git push --force-with-lease

But why? This is a TIL for me because I’ve used this command for years without reading the docs.

Take it away, docs:

This option allows you to say that you expect the history you are updating is what you rebased and want to replace. If the remote ref still points at the commit you specified, you can be sure that no other people did anything to the ref.

Duplicate your Development Branch for QA

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m working on a team where we keep a clone of the development branch (the main place where work is done), used to deploy to a QA environment. The benefits of this branching technique are:

clone is isolated from work
It’s easy to tell what was deployed to QA– clone is the source of truth

Porting TIL from Rails to Phoenix: Initial Commits

Tue, 29 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I started a new project: porting Today I Learned from Ruby on Rails to Phoenix (Elixir).

How and Why to Squash Your Pull Request

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Many pull requests go through a cycle: programmer opens pull request, maintainer gives feedback, programmer makes changes, repeat until ready to merge, maintainer merges. Prior to the merge, the pull request can be messy, full of reverts, fixups, and WIP commits. In the end, those commits are noise. We can tell a better story by squashing the branch.

Delete Remote Git Tags

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 14:18:40 -0500

Tagging releases with Git is a good idea. In case your tags get off track, here is how you delete a Git tag locally and on a remote:

$ git tag -d abc
$ git push origin :refs/tags/abc
To git@github.com:hashrocket/hr-til
- [deleted] abc

It gets trickier if you’re using Semantic Versioning, which includes dots in the tag name. The above won’t work for v16.0.0. This will:

$ git tag -d v16.0.0
$ git push origin :v16.0.0
To git@github.com:hashrocket/hr-til
- [deleted] v16.0.0

Git Log With Authors

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:29:59 -0600

In my never-ending quest to better summarize my work at the end of the day using computers, I discovered today the Git --author flag. It works like this:

$ glg --since=midnight --author=dev+jwworth+mikechau@hashrocket.com
* 4ba91a8 (HEAD, origin/checkout, checkout) Add guard for manual entry of employee discount
* 3a4e4c9 Seed a coupon and code and auto-apply in preview
* cb1adee Add discount
...

The alias glg is discussed here.

I use this when multiple developers or teams are committing throughout the day to the same repository, to disambiguate our work from others. Ready to paste into your billing software of choice.

The Alpha Commit

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 11:24:53 -0500

I like to read commit logs.

Today I wanted to see the first commit on a project. Here’s what I used:

git rev-list --max-parents=0 HEAD

Show me the commits that led to HEAD in reverse chronological order; then limit that list to the commits with no parent.

Here’s a small modification, to show the entire commit rather than the SHA alone:

git show $(git rev-list --max-parents=0 HEAD)

Git Log since

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 17:42:09 -0500

At the end of each day, I try to record what I did, to jog my memory during the next morning’s standup. This is a helpful aid:

git log --since="24 hours ago"

I SSH into my work machine and run this in my project’s root directory. Combined with an alias from the Hashrocket Dotmatrix, glg (git log --graph --oneline --decorate --color --all), I get a terse summary of the day’s work, ready to be pasted into your note-taking or project management tool of choice:

Git Snapshot

Fri, 08 May 2015 12:33:10 -0400

To save a snapshot of your current work in git, try this command:

git stash save "snapshot: $(date)" && git stash apply "stash@{0}"

This saves your current work in a timestamped stash, without removing it. In Hashrocket’s dotmatrix this command is aliased to git snapshot.

Undo a Git Mistake

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 15:25:51 -0400

git reflog is a record of your actions in Git. With this command, you can undo almost any Git mistake.

$ git reflog
4bd0090 HEAD@{0}: <bad place>
46bd839 HEAD@{1}: <bad place>
967e214 HEAD@{2}: <last good place>
46bd839 HEAD@{3}: <good place>
967e214 HEAD@{4}: <good place>
$ git reset --hard HEAD@{2}