Nicely formatting git logs (and some gerrit tips)

I recently found that the command that I show you below is the most common one that I use. Sometimes when you work on a big git repo you need to understand where your current changes are in the git history and command like git log is of big help, but apparently there are multiple arguments to this line that could enhance overall visibility of this log. In particular I added the below aliases to .gitconfig to quickly see my status.

[alias]
lg1 = log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --format=format:'%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) - %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset) %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)%C(bold yellow)%d%C(reset)' --all
lg2 = log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --format=format:'%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) - %C(bold cyan)%aD%C(reset) %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset)%C(bold yellow)%d%C(reset)%n''          %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)' --all
lg = !"git lg1"
lgs = !"git lg -10"

Then when I could use git lg or git lgs to get something like this:

This helps me to quickly see, which branch I’m in comparing to the overall history, who committed what and when, and quickly navigate in the logs.

A word on gerrit

Gerrit is a code review tool often used within software enterprises to manage large repositories. If you want to have a shortcut to the repos that you work on, then go to Settings->Preferences and add a new url that will appear at the top of gerrit page.

Example of url is the following and depends on the name of your repo.

#/dashboard/?title=Alpha+team&Scala+open=is:open+project:enterprise/rnn-prospecting-eligibility&Python+open=is:open+project:enterprise/rnn-prospecting-eligibility-python&Recently+closed=is:closed+project:enterprise/rnn-prospecting-eligibility+OR+project:enterprise/rnn-prospecting-eligibility-python+limit:15

This will display a url named Alpha at the top of the page that will lead to recent commits of the corresponding projet. No need to use search anymore.