Git alias: git unstage

Git, between the others, has a powerful feature called alias.
It’s pretty straightforward… Is there a command you always fail to remember? Add a more friendly shortcut! Is there a command you use frequently, that requires too much keystrokes? Create a shorter alias for it… or perhaps, you think that a fundamental command is missing from git? Then you can create it yourself using existing commands.

My favourite alias is git unstage.

git config --global alias.unstage "reset HEAD --"

It permits to remove one, or more files from the staging area.

git unstage path/to/file.png

It’s equivalent to:

git reset HEAD -- path/to/file.png

As you can see there’s not a great saving in terms of keystrokes, but, at least form me, it is so much more easy to remember.

I think, the first place where I read of this trick is Pro Git book, by by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub.

A last tip

If you start setting lots of aliases, chances are that you need to review them from time to time.

The following command prints the aliases you’ve set so far.

git config --list | grep alias

As always, it can be combined with configuration access modifiers, --system, --global, and --local, to specify the configuration file from which read the aliases.