A command-line script to make it easier to have a github forking workflow that keeps me from getting confused about which "master", "upstream", "origin", etc. that I'm working on.
The key elements are:
- Have the local clone "master" branch only point to the master branch of the "upstream" repository (i.e., not my fork)
- In my github fork, never have a "master" branch - instead call it something else like "staging".
- Never use remote names "origin" and "upstream" when there's a fork. Therein lies madness (git his no intrinsic concept of "upstream", and github only marginally does). Instead, just have all the remote names match the github user/organization names.
The script in this repo will ensure those are met when you clone a new repo. Just put the script somewhere in your PATH and run it with the "upstream" repo provided as the command line argument. For example, to clone and fork this repo, you'd do:
$ sane_fork_and_clone eteq/sanity-preserving-gh-workflow
once that's done you'll have a sanity-preserving-gh-workflow directory inside wherever you ran it, with remotes named "eteq" and "{your user name}", and the local master will point to "eteq"'s master branch. You can use sane_fork_and_clone --help to see the additional command-line options.