The “or” (||) operator and the “nullish coalescing operator” (??) can often be used in similar ways when reading a property from an object that may or may not exist. When dealing with strings you’re typically better off using “or” (||) and for numbers you’re typically better off using the “nullish coalescing operator” (??).
Dev Tips
SemVer TLDR
Semantic versioning (SemVer) is a standard for defining the version numbers. A version number consists of three numbers separated by periods (X.Y.Z). The type of change being introduced (e.g. a new feature or a change that breaks backwards compatibility) determines which numbers are incremented.
Git Alias Open Pull Request on GitHub
I want to be able to type “git open-github-pr” and have my browser open to the GitHub URL to create a Pull Request (PR) for my current branch on the current project I’m working on. Here is how I built this.
Your edited hunk does not apply
When using git add -p and faced with a hunk that can not be split sufficiently for your purposes, you can use the e option (manually edit the current hunk). Unfortunately, after manually editing the current hunk it is common to get the message “Your edited hunk does not apply.” I’ve found there are some things I can do to avoid this failure.
Writing Posts with CLI Commands
A lot of the posts I write include command-line interface (CLI) commands to type in. I’ve found over time there are things I can do to improve how these commands are communicated.
Git Merge Commit with Blocks
We can’t do a fast-forward merge when the most recent commit on the receiving branch does not appear in the branch we are merging in. One of our options in this situation is to create a merge commit when we merge in our branch.
Should I add .env to .gitignore?
The short answer is, “yes”. You should use your .gitignore file to ignore the .env file.
.gitignore Hidden Files with Exceptions
In most operating systems by default, files that start with a period (.) are hidden. When setting up my .gitignore file, I like to ignore all these hidden files (with a few exceptions).
Starter .gitignore file
This is my general starter .gitignore file for projects. I have a separate .gitignore for WordPress websites.
git add -p
By using “git add -p”, I can include some of my current changes in my commit (without including all of my changes).