Book Review: Pragmatic Version Control Using Git

I figured this was basic *ix sysadmin/developer strategy, but as soon as I
begin to get familiar enough with a command set I'm going to be using
regularly to discern what commands and variants I'll be using frequently,
I generally setup scriptlet/alias wrappers expressing the commands as I
interact with and think of them. Characteristically, these wrappers are
far shorter than the original commands, and devoid of slightly difficult
to touch-type characters like =/-/+. I might use g* to indicate git
commands, and gru for git remote update, for instance.

When there's enough scriptlet/alias task families that the short-form
namespaces start colliding, it's time to make them switchable. Put the
scriptlets in their own subdir and add it to the path. or source the alias
file to turn it on for instance, and remove it from the path and hash -r
or source the alias unsetter file to turn it off. It's also easy enough
to extend any supplied tab-completion scripts to include the wrappers as
well, making things even easier, as one then has /both/ tab-completion and
naturally/logically expressed wrappers to help them.

One quickly finds themselves with a set of 2-4 letter commands, obtuse to
others perhaps, but easy enough for the individual to work with as they've
been effectively customized to match his own thought processes. This
technique has certainly served me well over a reasonable range of task
families here, and generally, one either finds themselves learning the
commands and options the individual letters correspond to almost by
accident, if the mapping to the original commands is close enough (as I
did with my distribution's package management commands and options, for
instance), or can quickly lookup the wrapper to see what it does and
invoke the appropriate original command with appropriate modification as
necessary (as I've done with my kernel fetch/config/compile/install
scripts, for instance).