I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs • Hacker News Board

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#41

Post by Someone1234 » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #4

So effectively "I just discovered xargs"? Not to disparage OP but there isn't anything particularly novel here.

This feels like gatekeeping someone sharing something cool they've recently learned.

I personally lean more towards the "let's share cool little productivity tips and tricks with one another" instead of the "in order to share this you have to meet [entirely arbitrary line of novelty/cleverness/originality]."

But each to their own I suppose. I wonder how you learned about using xargs? Maybe a blog-post or article not dissimilar to this one?

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#42

Post by trashymctrash » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

If you squash your PR before merging, then this alternative worked really well for me:

  git fetch --prune && git branch -vv | awk '/: gone]/{print $1}' | xargs git branch -D

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#43

Post by giglamesh » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

GCUMstlyHarmls wrote: post #36

firesteelrain wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain TUI? I have never heard this before

Eg: lazygit https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit?tab=readme-ov-file#... https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi https://github.com/darrenburns/posting or I guess Vim would be a prominent example. Peoples definitions will be on a gradient, but its somewhere between CLI (type into a terminal to use) and GUI (use your mouse in a windowing system), TUI runs in your terminal like a CLI but probably supports "graphical widgets"…

So the acronym is for Terrible User Interface? ;)

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#44

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#45

Post by taude » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

I've had this in my ~/.bash_aliases for awhile:

  alias git-wipe-merged-branches='git branch --merged | grep -v \* | xargs git branch -D'

Trying to remember where I got that one, as I had commented the following version out:

  alias git-wipe-all-branches='git for-each-ref --format '%(refname:short)' refs/heads | grep -v master | xargs git branch -D'

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#46

Post by giglamesh » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

gjvc wrote: post #13

blakesterz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's handy! I just started using oh-my-zsh and I feel like I know about 4% of useful things it can do so far.

"trapd00r" is the theme you want, if only because the name is cool

I change themes just often enough to completely forget how to do it and also forget whatever other adjustments I had to make to it all work. And like... is my config versioned somehow? This is a long way to say, Thank You for inspiring me to look at all that stuff again!

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#47

Post by TarqDirtyToMe » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

KPGv2 wrote: post #37

firesteelrain wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain TUI? I have never heard this before

[flagged]

They aren’t the same thing. TUI refers to interactive ncurses-like interfaces. Vim has a TUI, ls does not

I’m fairly certain this terminology has been around since at least the early aughts.

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#48

Post by Cherub0774 » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 3:05 PM UTC

We all have something similar, it seems! I stole mine from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7726949/remove-tracking-....

I also set mine up to run on `git checkout master` so that I don't really have to think about it too hard -- it just runs automagically. `gcm` has now become muscle memory for me.

  alias gcm=$'git checkout master || git checkout main && git pull && git remote prune origin && git branch -vv | grep \': gone]\'|  grep -v "\*" | awk \'{ print $1; }\' | xargs -r git branch -D'

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#49

Post by rw_panic0_0 » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 3:05 PM UTC

whazor wrote: post #2

I currently have a TUI addiction. Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. Now I have a git worktree manager where I can add/rebase/delete. As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well, especially as it can test-run quite some Python code.

how do you trust the code claude wrote? don't you get anxiety "what if there's an error in tui code and it would mess up my git repo"?

Re: I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs

#50

Post by Muvasa » Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 3:09 PM UTC

Bjartr wrote: post #29

firesteelrain wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain TUI? I have never heard this before

Terminal User Interface, contrasting with a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Most often applied to programs that use the terminal as a pseudo-graphical canvas that they draw on with characters to provide an interactive page that can be navigated around with the keyboard. Really, they're just a GUI drawn with Unicode instead of drawing primitives. Like many restrictions, limiting oneself to just a fixed grid of colored…

I prefer tui's for two reasons. 1. Very used to vi keybindings 2. I like low resources software. I love the ability to open the software in less than a second in a second do what I needed using vi motions. And close it less than a second.

Some people will be like you save two seconds trying to do something simple. You lose more time building the tool than you will use it in your life.

It's not about saving time. It's about eliminating the mental toll from having to context switch(i know it sounds ai, reading so much ai text has gotten to me)