Thanks for the difftastic & zoxide tips!

However, I've been using this git pager/difftool: https://github.com/dandavison/delta

While it's not structural like difft, it does produce more readable output for me (at least when scrolling fast through git log -p /scanning quickly)

Yep, I tried at least 3 other differs (difft included) but delta was perfect and still is. Using it all the time.

This one I'm less sure about. I haven't yet gotten it to the point where I really like using it, but I'm sharing since someone might find it useful as a starting point:

  [alias]
    brancherry = "!f() { git checkout -b $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)-$(git rev-parse --short \"$1\") $1; }; f"

It's intended to be used for creating a cherry-picking branch. You give it an branch name, let's say "node", and it creates a branch with that as its parent, and the short commit hash as a suffix. So running "git brancherry node" creates the branch "node-abc1234" and switches to it.

The intended workflow being you cherry pick into that branch, create a PR, which then gets merged into the parent.

difftastic - amazing!

I've been wanting something like this for years...

Be prepared to hand out the difftastic URL and install instructions a lot :) I get asked "what git setting is that?" when I do diffs while sharing my screen.

meta-tip: you can also put your aliases that start with '!' into stand-alone shell scripts named `git-fza` (e.g.) and then call it as `git fza` which will search your PATH for `git-fza` and invoke it as if it's built-in.

I do this for some of my more complicated aliases because I generally think it's poor form to embed shell scripts into configuration languages. (Looking at you, yaml.)

I have several scripts like that in my PATH, but Git on Mac can never find them. What am I doing wrong?

The scripts have to be in your `PATH` and be executable from wherever you're running `git`.

Say you have a script named `git-foo`. At the shell prompt, all of these should work:

  $ which git-foo
  $ git-foo
  $ git foo

If the first or second commands fail, then `git-foo` is not in your PATH or is not executable. If those both work but the third command fails, I have no explanation. Here's the code which runs commands:

https://github.com/git/git/blob/2996f11c1d11ab68823f0939b646...

It basically prefixes your `PATH` (or a suitable default if `PATH` isn't set) with `GIT_EXEC_PATH` (defaulting to a compiled in value if not set) and then uses the normal Unix execvp machinery to run the command.

You can try:

  $ GIT_TRACE=1 git foo

But I'm not sure that will tell you anything helpful.

Well, this is fun:

    $ which git-foo
    $ type git-foo
    git-foo is /Users/my.user/.local/bin/git-foo

    $ git-foo --help
    Help output from git-foo

    $ GIT_TRACE=1 git foo
    14:26:18.849078 git.c:749               trace: exec: git-foo
    14:26:18.849815 run-command.c:657       trace: run_command: git-foo
    git: 'foo' is not a git command. See 'git --help'.

I can't say I've ever seen `which` and `type` disagree before ...

And today-I-learned that while bash expands `~` in PATH entries other programs do not. The fix was changing my PATH from:

    PATH=~/.local/bin:other:paths

to:

    PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:other:paths

Thanks so much for the help!

What version of git do you have? If it came with macOS and wasn't installed via homebrew, it's possible that it's old enough to cause problems.

git has had this behavior for at least a decade. As well, macOS does not ship with git - it's installed as part of either the Command Line Tools package and/or Xcode and is reasonably up to date.

For many years now, macOS has included what are effectively wrappers in /usr/bin for the various development tools and that use the xcode-select mechanism to run the actual command. If neither Xcode nor the CLT package are installed, you'll get a prompt to install the CLT package.

Oh nice, I didn't know that!

For git fza I override an oh-my-zsh alias "ga" to run it.