When I use git I constantly need to understand the shape of the history graph. And the best way to understand graphs is to visualize them. Maybe you already know about git log --graph --oneline --decorate, but that is a lot to type.

Add this alias to your .bash_profile, or .zshrc. I call it glga for “git-log-graph-author”, you can call it what you want.

alias glga="git log --graph --abbrev-commit --date=short --pretty=format:\
  '%C(yellow)%h%Creset %C(bold blue)(%an)%Creset%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen<%cr, %ar>%Creset'"

Below is a sample screenshot of the output. At a glance you can see how the commits are related in the graph, their shas, their authors, messages, and commit/author dates relative to now.

The only alias I use more often is rbbe for bundle exec.