Git layer

• git repository management the indispensable magit package
• forge add-on for magit.
• git-flow add-on for magit.
• quick in buffer history browsing with git-timemachine.
• quick in buffer last commit message per line with git-messenger
• colorize buffer line by age of commit with smeargle
• git grep with helm-git-grep
• org integration with magit via orgit

New to Magit? Checkout the official intro and Practicalli Spacemacs guide to configuring and using the Git and version control layers.

To use this configuration layer, add it to your ~/.spacemacs. You will need to add git to the existing dotspacemacs-configuration-layers list in this file.

Of course if your OS does not ship with git (!) you'll have to install it on your machine. You can download it from the download page.

To display the magit status buffer in fullscreen set the variable git-magit-status-fullscreen to t in your dotspacemacs/user-init function.

(defun dotspacemacs/user-init ()
  (setq-default git-magit-status-fullscreen t))

Magit auto-complete feature is enabled by default. For this feature to work best - setup magit repository list.

Spacemacs can be used as the $EDITOR (or $GIT_EDITOR) for editing git commits messages. This requires the entire library to be loaded immediately which will cost some time, disable it if you run into performance issues. To enable it you have to add the following lines to your dotspacemacs/user-config:

(require 'git-commit)
(global-git-commit-mode t)

Magit Forge can view and create issues & pull requests with forges (e.g. GitHub, GitLab)

Magit Forge requires a username for the respective forge and will prompt for a username if not found, writing it to ~/.gitconfig

Explicitly define a forge identity using the `git` command.

For GitHub:

git config --global github.user "username"

For GitLab:

git config --global gitlab.user "username"

See the official Magit Forge and GHub Getting Started for general guides or follow a community written Spacemacs specific guide to configuring Magit Forge.

See the commentary section of the package here.

Spacemacs uses magit to manage Git repositories.

To open a status buffer, type in a buffer of a Git repository: SPC g s. The central key binding hub of Magit is available on SPC g m.

Spacemacs uses forge for integration with remote forges, it is available from the status buffer with the @ key binding. For information on setting up remotes check the manual's Getting Started page.

Spacemacs uses evil-collection-magit for key bindings in magit buffers (unless your editing style is set to emacs, in which case you get the default magit bindings), which are the standard magit key bindings with some minimal changes to make them comfortable for evil users.

Here are the often used bindings inside a status buffer:

Magit allows you to stage specific lines by selecting them in a diff and hitting s to stage. Due to inconsistencies between Vim and Emacs editing styles, if you enter visual line state with V, you will stage one more line than intended. To work around this, you can use v instead (since Magit only stages whole lines, in any case).

In a commit message buffer the following key bindings are active:

In addition, regular commands for saving and killing a buffer such as :wq and ZZ can be used to commit changes.

A log selection buffer is presented as an interactive way of selecting a recent commit that is reachable from HEAD. such as when selecting the beginning of a rebase and when selecting a commit to be squashed into.

• Amend a commit:
  • l l to open log buffer
  • c a on the commit you want to amend
  • ~​,​c~ or C-c C-c to submit the changes
• Squash last commit:
  • l l to open log buffer
  • r e on the second to last commit, it opens the rebase buffer
  • j to put point on last commit
  • s to squash it
  • ~​,​c~ or C-c C-c to continue to the commit message buffer
  • ~​,​c~ or C-c C-c again when you have finished to edit the commit message
• Force push a squashed commit:
  • in the status buffer you should see the new commit unpushed and the old commit unpulled
  • P -f P for force a push (beware usually it is not recommended to rewrite the history of a public repository, but if you are sure that you are the only one to work on a repository it is ok - i.e. in your fork).
• Add upstream remote (the parent repository you have forked):
  • M to open the remote popup
  • a to add a remote, type the name (i.e. upstream) and the URL
• Pull changes from upstream (the parent repository you have forked) and push:
  • F -r C-u F and choose upstream or the name you gave to it
  • P P to push the commit to origin

magit-gitflow provides git-flow commands in its own magit menu.

git-timemachine allows to quickly browse the commits of the current buffer.

These key bindings allow to quickly construct URLs pointing to a given commit or lines in a file hosted on Git web services like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket…

Notes:

• You can use the universal argument SPC u to select a remote repository.
• When the link is opened, the URL is also copied in the kill ring, you can override this behavior by setting the variable git-link-open-in-browser to nil.

Feature displays a status-list of git repositories. Within your .spacemacs config, in the dotspacemacs/user-config() stanza configure magit-repository-directories to target Emacs to directories to look into.

(setq magit-repository-directories
      '(("~/Development/" . 2) ("~/src/" . 2)))

Where each element has the form (DIRECTORY . DEPTH), when DEPTH is 0 - then only add DIRECTORY itself. The DIRECTORY should end up with a / to respect Emacs conventions.

For more information, look into Magit-User-Manual#Status-Buffer

In a magit-status buffer (SPC g s):

In a forge-topic buffer: (a topic is either an issue or pull request)

In a forge-post buffer (assuming the major mode leader key is ,)