tyrelh / git-workflow

A simple workflow for teams

Git Workflow

A branching workflow keeps things sane when multiple devs are working on the same codebase.

• A branch should represent the smallest atomic addition of functionality (ideally).
• In order to stay up to date, rebase your branch onto origin/master often.
• In order to keep others up to date, and reduce merge conflicts on your behalf, don't merge your branch as soon as possible, adhere to the first point (within reason).
• We will use a rebasing workflow to keep our master branch linear.

Adapted from work by @JVerwolf (https://github.com/JVerwolf)

Starting a new unit of work (branch):

git checkout master
git fetch

Make sure you are now on master, and do not habe any work onmaster, because the next step will nuke it. Use git stash` before-hand if you do.

git reset --hard origin/master
git checkout -b 'branch-name-goes-here'

Checking the staging area:

Git performs action on files that have been placed in the staging area, which acts as a triage. To see what files are in the staging area:

git status

To add a file/directory to the staging area:

# To add a single file
git add some_file.py

# To add every file in the current directory
git add .

To commit, i.e. save files in the staging area to the local git repo:

git commit -m "A <50 character title describing WHAT functionality the commit adds"

Commit Message Best Practices. Try not to commit junk files. If unsure, ask your manager.

To push your branch to the remote repo (GitHub):

git push origin branch-name

To merge your work into master:

We use a no-ff merge because we have rebased onto master (so that our master branch stays linear), and we want to generate a merge commit for clarity/posterity. The message has the form "Merge branch 'branch-name'" so that it is easy to spot merge commits in the log.

git checkout your-branch-to-merge
git fetch
git rebase origin/master

If you have merge conflicts at this stage, you will need to fix them. After, repeat from the beginning.

git checkout master

Make sure you are now on master and do not have any work on master, because the next step will nuke it.

git reset --hard origin/master
git merge --no-ff 'your-branch-to-merge' -m "Merge branch 'your-branch-to-merge'"
git push origin master

NEVER DO THIS:

Never edit public history. You can always edit/change local and remote history in your own branches (using commit amending, interactive rebasing, resetting, force pushing, etc.). However, you should NEVER change history on remote/origin/master, and you should never edit other people's branches (unless you really know what you are doing and have the author's permission).

Other useful git commands:

See log of git commits:

git log

See branches:

git branch

Selectively add to staging area:

git diff
git diff .
git diff your-file.py

Interactive rebase for changing history (only change your own history):

git rebase -i <commit hash>

To add changes to your last commit:

git add changed_file.py
git commit --ammend