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Discussion on: Git commands to keep a fork up to date

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash

Ooh, a pull --rebase upstream master. Pro level upstream work!

I have shied away from too many aliases from my git setup, purely so that I can remember the actual commands and work with git anywhere. That's quite the list you have there and I bet I and others would learn quite a bit from reading through the ones you have aliased, which I assume you also use relatively frequently. Have you thought of writing anything up on all of these?

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor

I probably should. I mention it to others occasionally in comments. At the moment though, I've started, in my head at least, a "Converting dev.to's search to Preact", so gotta get that one out first 😉, i.e. github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/...

Keep up the awesome posts and looking forward to the next one. 🔥

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor
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xexyl profile image
xexzy

Another reason to shy away from aliases is that you get used to the aliases and then what happens when you use another system and forget you set up aliases ? Don’t laugh! It easily happens and although it’s never caused me a problem it’s because I don’t use aliases that have any behaviour modifications that matter; I for example alias gdb to ‘gdb -q’ but that’s harmless if it’s not on another install. Other commands can be far more devastating.

They can be useful but always always always remember this : aliases are for convenience and although I wouldn’t say it’s convenience XOR security the two do fight each other. And this includes data security too! But as pointed out if you rely too much on aliases you train your brain to remember those and forget the real invocations. This can particularly be a problem with different OSes more generally whether you go to a different job or maybe even worse is you use both on a daily basis.

Btw it’s happened that some people have gone to a new job but the previous say admin had set up aliases or config files that modify behaviour that has devastating consequences. This could even be deliberate and even compromise the network even installing a back door before parting! Yes that’s beyond development but still worth remembering.