PowerGit

git with the power of the object pipeline and familiar output formatting. Uses LibGit2Sharp, so does not require any git executable to be installed.

Forked from GitAutomation but made to work PSCore (Linux, macOS, Windows) and extended with lots of features.

Goals

• Utilize the object pipeline for outputs and inputs
• Provide beautiful output formatting that matches native git output
• Autocompletion for parameters and properties
• Follow PowerShell naming conventions
• Stay as close as possible to native git behaviour
• High test coverage
• Run cross-platform on Windows, macOS and Linux
• Interop with PSGitHub

Motivation

git is very object-oriented. The native git client works well for using interactively, but as soon as you want to do something that doesn't have an explicit command, you have to resort to complex grep, awk and xargs magic.

Take this example to delete local branches that were deleted on the remote from StackOverflow:

git branch -v|grep \\[gone\\]|awk '{print $1}'|xargs -I{} git branch -D {}

With PowerGit, you don't need to go to StackOverflow to remember how to do this:

Get-GitBranch | Where-Object { $_.IsTracking -and $_.TrackedBranch.IsGone } | Remove-GitBranch

Like this, many complex tasks are trivial with PowerGit that are difficult with git, while the standard use cases all work the same, but with all the benefits of PowerShell such as autocompletion, flexible formatting.

And because PowerGit is running .NET code directly in PowerShell without external processes, it is even faster than git.

Caveats

SSH is not currently supported: libgit2/libgit2sharp#1422 You'll have to configure your remotes with HTTP and pass the -Credential parameter for authentication. You can set a credential to always be used with $PSDefaultParameterValues in your profile.ps1, or define multiple global variables with credentials for different servers to pass in the terminal.

For other applications using the native git client, enable the git credential helper.

Installation

Install-Module PowerGit -Scope CurrentUser

How to use

Cloning

Use Copy-GitRepository. It works just like git clone, but with fancier progress reporting:

Log

Use Get-GitCommit to query the commits in the repository.

To page the output, make sure to pipe into Out-Host -Paging (short oh -p).

Multiple git pretty formats are supported. The default output mirrors the default git medium output:

short, full, fuller and patch are supported as alternative list views, e.g. Get-GitCommit | Format-List -View Fuller (or short fl -v fuller).

Patch will include colored diffs:

For oneline, simply pipe to Format-Table (short ft).

Branch

Create new branches with New-GitBranch, which will directly check out the new branch. The function returns the branch object of the new branch, which you can directly pipe to Send-GitBranch/

New-GitBranch my-branch
New-GitBranch my-branch | Send-GitBranch

To list all branches, use Get-GitBranch. You may supply parameters to filter by name (wildcards supported) or remote/local/all branches. The default output table view Verbose includes information about the tracking status of the branch. To also see names of tracking branches, pipe to Format-Table -View VeryVerbose (or ft -v veryverbose), which mimics git branch -vv output.

Delete branches with the Remove-GitBranch command (supports pipeline input, autocompletion, -WhatIf and -Confirm).

The current branch can be retrieved with Get-GitHead (which may return a DetachedHead branch object if the HEAD does not point to a named branch).

To checkout a different branch, use Set-GitHead. The parameter for the revision supports autocompletion of branch names and tags.

Add

Add a file to the index to prepare it for committing.

Add-GitItem path/to/file
Add-GitItem -All

Status

To check the current repository status, use Get-GitRepositoryStatus or Get-GitStatus. The output is one status entry for each changed file, grouped by changes to the index and changes to the working directory.

Commit

Create a commit from the staged changes in the index. If you don't provide the -Message parameter, PowerShell will prompt you for the Message. You can also amend the previous commit (in which case -Message is optional), or make an empty commit with -AllowEmpty.

Save-GitCommit -Message 'Make changes'
Save-GitCommit -Amend
Save-GitCommit -Message 'No change' -AllowEmpty

Push

Send the currently checked out branch to the remote, or a specific branch by piping a branch or providing -Name. You may provide a remote to push to with -Remote. The output is the branch that was sent (including the updated tracking info), so it can be further piped to different commands.

To push a branch for the first time and set it up to track the upstream, use -SetUpstream (or -u). The remote will default to origin in that case, and the branch will still default to the current branch.

Send-GitBranch # equivalent to Get-GitHead | Send-GitObject
Send-GitBranch -SetUpstream
Send-GitBranch origin master -SetUpstream
New-GitBranch feature/my-feature | Send-GitBranch
Get-GitBranch feature/* | Send-GitBranch

Pull

Incorporate the remote changes into the current branch with Receive-GitBranch. To prune deleted branches, pass -Prune. Customize the merge strategy with -MergeStrategy Merge or -MergeStrategy FastForward.

Tip: You can set a default for these parameters with $PSDefaultParameterValues in your profile.ps1.

Receive-GitBranch
Receive-GitBranch -Prune -MergeStrategy Merge

Progress is reported through Write-Progress.

Fetch

To fetch remote branches without merging them into local branches, run Receive-GitObject. Fetch tags with -TagFetchMode All.

Receive-GitObject
Receive-GitObject -TagFetchMode All

Merge

Merge a revision (commit, branch, etc) into the current branch. You can supply a merge strategy with -MergeStrategy. You may also pipe the revision to be merged.

Merge-GitCommit e8091b5
(Get-GitRepository | Get-GitHubRepository).DefaultBranch | Merge-GitCommit

Rebase

You can start a rebase of the current branch onto a different revision with Start-Rebase. You may also rebase a different branch by supplying -Branch or piping in branches or even Get-GitHubPullRequest output. Progress will be reported through Write-Progress. If there is any conflict encountered, rebasing will pause and you can resume the process after fixing conflicts with Resume-GitRebase. To abort the rebase, run Stop-GitRebase.

Start-GitRebase master
Get-GitBranch -Name fb/* | Start-GitRebase master
Get-GitHubPullRequest -Filter created | Start-GitRebase master
Resume-GitRebase
Stop-GitRebase

Reset

To hard-reset the current branch to a given revision, use Reset-GitHead -Hard. For a soft reset, use -Soft. If given no parameters, Reset-GitHead acts as the inverse of Add-GitItem.

Reset-GitHead
Reset-GitHead -Hard origin/master

Compare

To diff two revisions, run Compare-GitTree. The output is a TreeChanges object that enumerates all files that were changed. The function takes two revisions, -DifferenceRevision and -ReferenceRevision. -DifferenceRevision defaults to the current HEAD. -ReferenceRevision must be given, or can be supplied from the pipeline (branches, commits or pull requests can be piped).

Compare-GitTree master
Compare-GitTree -ReferenceRevision master -DifferenceRevision feature/foobar
Get-GitHubPullRequest -Number 1234 | Compare-GitTree -DifferenceRevision master

Config

You can change git configuration with Set-GitConfiguration. Use the -Scope parameter to define if you want to change Local (default) or Global configuration.

Set-GitConfiguration -Scope Global -Name 'user.name' -Value 'Felix Becker'

Usage with PSGitHub

Creating a branch, commiting, and opening a PR for changes

# Same repo
New-GitBranch my-branch | Send-GitBranch -SetUpstream | New-GitHubPullRequest
# From fork with same name to upstream
New-GitBranch my-branch | Send-GitBranch -SetUpstream | New-GitHubPullRequest -Owner upstream-user -ForkOwner felixfbecker

• Head is set to the branch name (refs/heads/...)
• Title is set to Tip.MessageShort (the first line of the commit)
• Base defaults to default branch of (upstream) repository
• Owner defaults to the owner of the current branch (from tracking branch remote URL)
• ForkOwner defaults to not set (same repo, no fork)

Prompt

You can use PowerGit's Get-GitStatusPrompt in your prompt function to output a colorful summary of the current directories' git status like posh-git does. Since PowerGit doesn't need to call into external processes, it is much faster than posh-git, which is important for a prompt function to not delay the next prompt.

Cheat sheet

git	PowerGit
git clone https://github.com/felixfbecker/PowerGit.git	Copy-GitRepository https://github.com/felixfbecker/PowerGit.git
git checkout foo	Set-GitHead foo
git push	Send-GitBranch
git push -u origin foo	Send-GitBranch -u foo
git fetch --tags	Receive-GitObject -TagFetchMode All
git pull --ff-only	Receive-GitBranch -MergeStrategy FastForward
git checkout -b bar	New-GitBranch bar
git status	Get-GitRepositoryStatus
git add README.md	Add-GitItem README.md
git commit -m "message"	Save-GitCommit -m "message"
git merge my-branch	Merge-GitCommit mybranch
git reset	Reset-GitHead
git reset --hard origin/master	Reset-GitHead -Hard origin/master
git rebase master	Start-GitRebase master
git rebase --continue	Resume-GitRebase
git rebase --abort	Stop-GitRebase
git log	Get-GitCommit
git log --oneline	Get-GitCommit | ft
git log -p	Get-GitCommit | fl -v patch
git show be1db11	Get-GitCommit be1db11 | fl -v patch
git rev-parse HEAD	(Get-GitCommit HEAD).Sha

Or dot-source Aliases.ps1, which defines aliases for all the native git equivalents.

Tips

• Run (Get-Module PowerGit).ExportedCommands to see a list of all available commands
• All commands have help through Get-Help
• PowerShell allows shortening commands if the abbreviation is umambiguous. That means you can write Copy-GitRepo instead of Copy-GitRepository
• Same for parameters: you can write -m instead of -Message, just like with native git
• Commands and parameters in PowerShell are case-insenstive. If you prefer writing everything lowercase, you can do that
• $PSDefaultParameterValues works great for always applying certain options like credentials, prune behaviour, merge strategy etc.

Contributing

SVG Screenshots

SVG Screenshots are created with term2svg

termtosvg ./Screenshots/frames -s -g 100x12 -t base16_default_dark -c 'pwsh -NoExit -Command clear'

-s outputs still .svg frames. Always use the base16_default_dark theme for consistency. Keep the column width at 100 for best readability in the README (resize your terminal to match the width). If 12 is not enough the row height should be matched to the output of the command. Execute your command, then execute exit. Pick the frame that shows the command output but does not show the next prompt.