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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by 1000mH@hexbear.net to c/programming@programming.dev

Sometimes I talk to friends who need to use the command line, but are intimidated by it. I never really feel like I have good advice (I’ve been using the command line for too long), and so I asked some people on Mastodon:

if you just stopped being scared of the command line in the last year or three — what helped you?

This list is still a bit shorter than I would like, but I’m posting it in the hopes that I can collect some more answers. There obviously isn’t one single thing that works for everyone – different people take different paths.

I think there are three parts to getting comfortable: reducing risks, motivation and resources. I’ll start with risks, then a couple of motivations and then list some resources.

I'd add ImageMagick for image manipulation and conversion to the list. I use it to optimize jpg's which led me to learn more about bash scripting.

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[-] StudioLE@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

You've never used a graphical git client?!

I'm comfortable on the command line but a decent git UI is a way better experience.

git diff is so basic using a GUI makes it far easier to compare changes.

Same for merge conflicts. I'm not sure you can even resolve them on the CLI?

Any form of rebase: I think I used the CLI to do an interactive rebase a few times in the early days but I'd never do so without a GUI now.

Managing branches: perhaps I'm a little too ott but I keep a lot of branches preserved locally, a GUI provides a decent tree structure for them whereas I assume on the command line I'd just get a long list.

Managing stashes: unless you just want to apply latest stash (which admittedly is almost always the case) then I'd much rather check what I'm applying through a GUI first.

There are some things I still use the CLI for though:

git remote add git remote set-url because I'm just too lazy to figure out how to do that in a GUI. It's usually hidden away somewhere.

git push --force because every GUI makes it such an effort. C'mon! I know what I'm doing - it's /probably/ not going to mess things up...

[-] atheken@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I use git on the CLI exclusively. I almost never rebase, but otherwise get by with about 5-10 commands. One that will totally change your experience is git add -p

I also have my diff/mergetool configured to use kaleidoscope, but still do everything else in the CLI.

[-] Faresh@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

git add -p is great to know, but IMO one shouldn't rely on it too much, because one should strive committing early and often (which eliminates the need for that command). Also using git add -p has the risk of accidentally not adding some code that actually belongs to the change you are trying to commit. That has happened to me sometimes in the past and only later do I see that the changes I commited are broken because I excluded some code that I thought didn't belong to that feature.

[-] atheken@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are other reasons to use it. A major one is doing a “code review” of changes before committing, or even deciding to drop a chunk of code from a commit entirely (like a debug statement that no longer is necessary.)

I’m all about frequent commits (and right-sized commits), but the functionality can still be beneficial even in those scenarios.

I also don’t care if I have a broken commit. This turns up very quickly, and there is zero expectation that feature branches are always in a working/stable state. The expectation is that pending work gets off the local machine on a regular interval.

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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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