I am chaining a bunch of git commands in alias as below. How do I get the 'echo' part to work:
[alias] comb = ! sh -c 'echo \"Combining branches $1 with $2\"' && git checkout $2 && git merge $1 && git push && git checkout $1 && : Some context: Git Alias - Multiple Commands and Parameters
Do not use single quotes around echo — Unix shells do not expand parameters inside single quotes. The fix is
$ git config alias.comb '! sh -c "echo \"Combining branches $1 with $2\""' $ git config alias.comb ! sh -c "echo \"Combining branches $1 with $2\"" Example:
$ git comb 1 2 3 Combining branches 1 with 2 Or
$ git config alias.comb '! sh -c "echo \"Combining branches $*\""' $ git config alias.comb ! sh -c "echo \"Combining branches $*\"" $ git comb 1 2 3 Combining branches 1 2 3 
The standard trick is to define a function which you immediately call.
[alias] comb = ! f () { echo "Combining branches $1 with $2" && git checkout "$2" && git merge "$1" && git push && git checkout "$1" && :; } f This simplifies the quoting.
echo alias that I commented below?
sh to execute them, rather than having sh only execute echo. Git aliases don't take arguments, only the shell, so you need a single command that can receive arguments (either sh or a function) in which to use $1` and $2.git comb foo bar expands to f () { ... }; f foo bar (or in your original case, sh -c 'echo ...' && git ... && git ... && : foo bar).Your quotes are messed up:
comb = ! sh -c 'echo "Combining branches $1 with $2" && git checkout "$2" && git merge "$1" && git push && git checkout "$1"' You could also consider changing your alias to an executable called git-comb and store it somewhere in your path:
$ cat /path/to/executables/git-comb #!/bin/sh if [ "$#" -ne 2 ] then >&2 printf 'Usage: %s <ref> <ref>\n" "${0##*/}" exit 2 fi echo "Combining branches $1 with $2" git checkout "$2" git merge "$1" git push git checkout "$1" This way you can call it with:
$ git comb branch_1 branch_2 
comb = ! sh -c 'echo "Combining $1 with $2"'. Or let's say, I create an alias echo = ! sh -c 'echo "$*"', I expect git echo Hello World to work.