Setting git default flags on commands

You can use a custom format to have git log mimic --abbrev-commit by default:

git config format.pretty "format:%h %s" 

There is no generic mechanism in git to set default arguments for commands.

You can use git aliases to define a new command with the required arguments:

git config alias.lg "log --oneline" 

Then you can run git lg.

Some commands also have configuration settings to change their behavior.

I like the git log --oneline format. To get it as default, use

git config --global format.pretty oneline

Credit: https://willi.am/blog/2015/02/19/customize-your-git-log-format/

VonC has already hinted at a shell wrapper in his answer; here is my Bash implementation of such a wrapper. If you put this e.g. into your .bashrc, your interactive shell will support overriding of Git built-in commands as well as uppercase aliases.

# Git supports aliases defined in .gitconfig, but you cannot override Git # builtins (e.g. "git log") by putting an executable "git-log" somewhere in the # PATH. Also, git aliases are case-insensitive, but case can be useful to create # a negated command (gf = grep --files-with-matches; gF = grep # --files-without-match). As a workaround, translate "X" to "-x". git() { typeset gitAlias="git-$1" if type ${BASH_VERSION:+-t} "$gitAlias" >/dev/null 2>&1; then shift eval $gitAlias '"$@"' elif [ "$1" = "${1#-}" ] && expr "$1" : '.*[[:upper:]]' >/dev/null; then # Translate "X" to "-x" to enable aliases with uppercase letters. translatedAlias=$(echo "$1" | sed -e 's/[[:upper:]]/-\l\0/g') shift command git "$translatedAlias" "$@" else command git "$@" fi } 

You can then override git log by putting a script named git-log somewhere into your PATH:

#!/bin/sh exec git log --abbrev-commit "$@" 

I have a similar issue (many of the default options for Git commands are dumb). Here's my approach. Create a script called 'grit' (or whatever) on your path, as follows:

#!/bin/bash cmd=$1 shift 1 if [ "$cmd" = "" ]; then git elif [ $cmd = "log" ]; then git log --abbrev-commit $@ elif [ $cmd = "branch" ]; then git branch -v $@ elif [ $cmd = "remote" ]; then git remote -v $@ else git $cmd $@ fi 

Very straightforward to read and maintain, in case you need to share it with Bash non-experts.

A mixing of Steve Bennett's and PotatoFarmer's ideas above, but fully dynamic needing no script updates as well as allowing per-project flags by leveraging git's "alias" feature and our own convention: Anything prefixed with "my-" gets our treatment, otherwise it's just passed on. I have this as "~/bin/my_git" and use an alias in .bashrc to use it in place of git (alias git="$HOME/bin/my_git"):

#!/bin/bash set -euo pipefail cmd=${1:-} shift 1 if [ "$cmd" = "" ]; then git # Ask git itself if we have a "my-<cmd>" version to prefer elif git config --list | egrep -q "^alias\.my-$cmd="; then git my-$cmd $@ else git $cmd $@ fi 

And of course matching entries as desired in ~/.gitconfig and/or your project's .git/config file:

[alias] my-merge = merge --no-commit my-log = log --name-status 

Every utility we use (svn, maven, git, ...) are always encapsulated in a .bat (on Windows, or .sh on Unix), in order to offer our developers one directory to add to their path.

If git is encapsulated in a wrapper script, then... everything is possible.

But that remains a solution linked to the user's setup, not linked to Git itself or the git repo.