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Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

I'm highly aware of which branch I'm on. Because it's because I don't use any scripts or automation that switches branches; I only ever switch branches manually so I have that awareness.

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I only switch branches manually too, but I work in many repos and come back to stuff after days sometimes.

Even if I know my current branch, having my prompt show me untracked/uncommitted/unpushed changes helps to identify if something didn’t work because I’m in a dirty state, or if something I ran (unexpectedly) caused a dirty state.

For example, I don’t expect running scripts/build.sh to modify tracked files in the repo. Seeing part of the prompt go from “” to “?2!3” (two untracked, three changed files) makes that glaringly obvious.

"git status" is all you need then.

Then you have to remember to run this regularly. Which i regularly forget in tmux autopilot mode. The prompt serves as one last headsup reminder. Even then sometimes I dont look at it and have to roll some stuff back

How well does this work when you work on multiple repos with longer pauses inbetween?

And the Branch is also an unintrusive reminder that you are in a path under versioncontrol.

not op, but if I haven’t been in a working directory for a while, I always run `git status` anyway. Then I know the branch and any out of date files. I usually run `git pull —-rebase` and get everything back up to date. I try not to leave broken branches around, so It’s rare that knowing which branch I’m on is an issue.

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