Set Branch Alias with Git

By  on  

Version control systems can be difficult to use, especially when you don't use a UI app. Just think about main branch or revision names: svn uses "trunk", git uses "master", and mercurial (hg) uses "tip". I need to switch between mercurial and git frequently, so I end up reversing command and branch names constantly.

To set a git branch alias, execute the following:

# alias -> real branch
git symbolic-ref refs/heads/trunk refs/heads/master

With the alias in place, you can execute commands like:

git checkout trunk
git branch # * master

Not only can you create git aliases for commands, but you can create aliases for branches!

Recent Features

  • By
    Facebook Open Graph META Tags

    It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites.  Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly.  And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website.  One...

  • By
    6 Things You Didn’t Know About Firefox OS

    Firefox OS is all over the tech news and for good reason:  Mozilla's finally given web developers the platform that they need to create apps the way they've been creating them for years -- with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  Firefox OS has been rapidly improving...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    PHP IMDB Scraper

    It's been quite a while since I've written a PHP grabber and the itch finally got to me. This time the victim is the International Movie Database, otherwise known as IMDB. IMDB has info on every movie ever made (or so it seems). Their...

  • By
    dat.gui:  Exceptional JavaScript Interface Controller

    We all love trusted JavaScript frameworks like MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo, but there's a big push toward using focused micro-frameworks for smaller purposes. Of course, there are positives and negatives to using them.  Positives include smaller JS footprint (especially good for mobile) and less cruft, negatives...

Discussion

  1. Michael

    Any idea how to do this in a Bitbucket repository? Can I push this symbolic refs somehow?

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!