In the next post we are going to take a look at Bit. This is a new CLI to use Go which is written in Go. It will offer us autocompletion / suggestions for commands, flags, file and branch names, and even some new commands. This CLI is available for Gnu / Linux, Windows and MacOS.
This tool in addition to supporting all available git commands, it also comes with some commands of its own. For example, we can write pr bit to view and check out GitHub pull requests (this requires having the GitHub CLI). If we write save bit It will allow us to synchronize the changes with the branch of origin.
General characteristics
Some of the features of this tool include:
- Is going to offer us command and flag suggestions to help us navigate the myriad of options that git gives you (hints work with git aliases).
- The tool offers the autocomplete function for files and branch names when is it used bit add o bit checkout.
- You also have the option of Automatic recovery and fast forward to keep branches up-to-date and avoid merge conflicts.
- Instant git statistics and configuration information.
- Es fully compatible with git. This allows the user to fall back to git if necessary.
- Is going to offer us new commands as; bit sync, which simplifies your entire relining workflow with a single command. The command pr bit It will help us to see and withdraw Github extraction requests (requires GitHub CLI). The command will be used to synchronize our changes in the branch of origin save bit. This is roughly equivalent to git pull -r; git push.
- Commands git-extras as bit release e info bit.
- It can update automatically with the update of this tool, and classic tab completion can be installed.
- Bit too supports some visual customization. If you don't like the default theme, or you use a lightweight terminal theme, you can reverse the Bit theme by exporting BIT_THEME = inverted, or use a monochrome theme using BIT_THEME = monochrome. However, doesn't seem to support custom color themes.
The tool is less than 2 months old, so there are many other features planned for future releases. They can consult all the features offered from the project GitHub page.
Download and install Bit on Ubuntu 20.04
We can find this tool available as a precompiled binary for Gnu / Linux, NetBSD, macOS, and Windows. To be able to use it in Ubuntu, we will only have to go to the project release page and from there download the package that interests us. We will also have the option to choose to download the 64-bit Gnu / Linux package using wget. For this we will only have to use the following command in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):
wget https://github.com/chriswalz/bit/releases/download/v0.9.11/bit_0.9.11_linux_amd64.tar.gz
Once the download is finished, if you don't want to extract the package from the graphical environment, you can extract the file we just downloaded using a command like the following:
tar -xzvf bit_0.9.11_linux_amd64.tar.gz
The above command is going to unzip three files. Two of them are readable, the third will be the installer that we are going to use. We are going to install this CLI on the route / usr / local / bin using this other command:
sudo install bit /usr/local/bin
To know other ways to install Bit, users can see the installation section which can be found on the project's GitHub page.
Using this tool is simple. In the terminal we will not have more than write bit and press the key Intro. This will make a drop-down appear where we can select the command that we are interested in using.
As I was saying, this command will show the interactive bit flag. We will not have more than use the up and down arrow keys to navigate through all the Git options that we will see available. We can also write some letters of the command we want to search to filter the results.
In order to start using bit, at their GitHub page users can find a basic explanation about its use.