Asciinemas

Terminal recordings to show basic but useful uses of something that is worth sharing ends up on this page.

git

• git grep is very useful for finding a keyword in a codebase. Occasionally someone will tell you to “grep it”. This is how. The -i is to search case insensitive.

• interactive git rebase is a nice way to cleanup and structure your commits. The demonstration shows removing one of the commits, next squashing all other commits into one. Ideal if you’re experimenting a bit, got it right in the end and don’t want to bother the reviewers with your in-between trial-and-error.

Find out what recent changes caused potential problems using git blame to relate recent changes to commits. Next you could find to what branch/MR that commit came from and find out more about the context of the changes, leading you to an idea for fixes.

bash

• Go to previous folder, ctrl-R to search through commands you executed earlier and tab to atocomplete folder names.

vim

• Basic commands to use the vim editor. Toggling between normal mode and insertion mode. Executing commands in normal mode like write to file, quit and quit with saving.

python debugging

• Use pdb to drop into the python debugger at any point. Once in the debugger, print a variable, execute the next command, continue running the application as usual and quit the debugger.

Creating your own recordings

Install asciinema and asciinema-agg to compile the recording to a gif.

sudo apt-get install asciinema
snap install asciinema-agg

Start recording:

asciinema rec tutorial_xyz.cast
# Now type what you want to show.
# When done, type ctrl-d.
# Now convert the cast textfile to an animated gif:
asciinema-agg tutorial_xyz.cast tutorial_xyz.gif