Creating a git alias with a parameter

Question

I have written the following git alias to push my commits to origin and tag it with the paramater passed to the alias, and then push the tags too

pomt = !git push origin master && git tag '$1' && git push --tag

usage :

git pomt myTagGoesHere

however, this fails with an error

fatal 'myTagGoesHere' does not appear to be a git repository

I have since found there are other options for achieving this Push git commits & tags simultaneously

but I am curious what is wrong with the alias I have created and would still like to know how to do it this way just for the sake of learning how to create aliases with parameters

this is on Windows, btw, if that makes any difference to the shell scripting

VonC · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-07T11:30:55.273

9

You can instead use a shell function:

pomt = "!f(){ git push origin master && git tag \"$1\"  && git push --tag; };f"

Note: I would recommend created an annotated tag instead of a lightweight one.

Alternative:

Make a script called git-pomt anywhere on your %PATH% (no extension): it will be regular bash script (again, works even on Windows, as it is interpreted by the git bash)

In that script, you can define any sequence of command you want, and you would still call it with git pomt mytag (no '-': git pomt)

#!/bin/bash
git push origin master 
git tag $1
git push --tag

edited Oct 07 '16 at 11:30

answered Oct 07 '16 at 10:46

VonC

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thanks - couple of small typos - there are two sets of ampersands before the final git push. and it needs a set of quotes at the start. And thanks for the heads-up on annotated tags – ChrisCa Oct 07 '16 at 11:11
@ChrisCa Right: fixed. – VonC Oct 07 '16 at 11:12
cheers - leaving this open for a few more hours just to see other interesting answers - thanks again – ChrisCa Oct 07 '16 at 11:20
@ChrisCa Sure. I have edited my answer to add an alternative – VonC Oct 07 '16 at 11:31

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

A git alias is invoked with the arguments appended to the alias command line as is. The fact that the named arguments ($1, $2, etc) are expanded in the command line doesn't prevent those arguments from being appended to the expanded alias command.

In your example

git pomt myTagGoesHere

gets expanded to

git push origin master && git tag myTagGoesHere && git push --tag myTagGoesHere
#                                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Thus myTagGoesHere is being passed to the git push command as well, resulting in the observed error.

VonC already showed how to circumvent that problem through an introduction of a (temporary) function. Another solution is to feed the arguments to a no-op command:

pomt = !git push origin master && git tag '$1' && git push --tag && :

EDIT

BTW, you can debug the operation of a shell git alias by prefixing it with set -x:

$ git config alias.pomt '!set -x; git push origin master && git tag $1 && git push --tags'
$ git pomt tag5
+ git push origin master
Everything up-to-date
+ git tag tag5
+ git push --tags tag5
fatal: 'tag5' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

Creating a git alias with a parameter

2 Answers2