Git QuickFix

Quickfix allows you to commit changes in your git repository to a new branch without leaving the current branch.

Motivation

I have often written a patch for some minor blemish that caught my attention. I found it annoying to have to stage my main changes, switch to a new branch created off the main branch, commit and push the patch and then switch back to the original branch.

Benefits

• Minimize context switching.
• Much quicker on large repositories, where branch switching take significant time.
• Everything happens in memory, so tools watching the file system will not get confused.

How it works

1. Commit the changes.

2. git quickfix --push <new_branch>

   • This will create a new branch named <new_branch> based-off origin/main (or whatever the remote default branch is).
   • The last commit on your current branch will be cherry-picked onto this new branch.
   • Leave out --push if you do not want to push the new branch to origin.

3. git quickfix --help provides more options.

   • With --onto <branch> you can modify the branch from which <new_branch> is based-off.
   • With --keep you can keep the last commit on the current branch.

The new commit and the new branch are both created in memory. This means your working directory will not be modified. Unless --keep is provided, the staged changes will be removed.

You can also use the alias qf: git qf.

Installation

You can use Cargo to install quickfix.

cargo install git-quickfix

Known Issues

• A dirty index or modified working directory will likely not work.
• Default branches from origin are picked up through a hard-coded list. Patches welcome.

TODO

• Add Github action
• --push currently use the Shell to push the changes. Benefits: All proxy, auth and other configs are picked up. But if does not feel right.