Git Aliases
There has been talk about how to shorten Git commands, mostly in an effort to assist those of us who are coming from Subversion. One proposed solution has been to use the alias mechanism native to your shell environment.
Another solution does exist. This one is internal to git itself. Due to that fact, the two main benefits are a shorter load time when starting a new shell (since you're not dealing with alias entries in your .profile script) and easier git-centric configuration.
Simply add the following to ~/.gitconfig:
[alias] co = checkout st = status br = branch ba = branch -a
Now instead of typing git checkout branch you only need to type git co branch. You can customized these as much as you'd like, adding other commands as well, as long as the command after the equals sign is a valid git command.
The obvious down side to this method is that you have to type git before these aliases. Using the other method, you do not.