Git Best Practices

This is a guide of git best-practices that should be followed while doing development on the reV repository. The reV development team practices github flow. For more git resources see this git tutorial, courtesy of Dheepak Krishnamurthy.

Best-Practices:

1. Use the Github insights network to understand the branch workflow.

2. Always branch off of Master (from the master branch: git checkout -b new_branch_name)

3. Rebase master before performing pull request (from your dev branch: git rebase master)

   a. If you pushed your new commits to the remote branch before performing the rebase (perhaps for backup purposes) then you will need to use the force flag when pushing the commits after the rebase. The force flag is required because the local and remote branches no longer have a common history. Git will then push the rewritten history to the remote branch.

   Common history: git push origin <branch>

   Divergent history because of rebase: git push --force origin <branch>

   Note: In general, be careful with the force flag. Never use it when pushing to a branch that others are consuming.

4. Perform pull requests frequently

   a. Aim for a 2 week branch lifetime

5. Always push commits

   a. Prevents risk of work loss due to laptop loss

   b. Creates risk of other people using commits that you later squash, but 7B but will prevent this

6. Try and avoid work planning that has branch-to-branch dependencies, but if branch-to-branch is required:

   a. Use git merge to utilize commits/features from other branches

   b. Use 7B to remove these commits/features before submitting a pull request to avoid duplicate commits and ensuing conflicts

   c. Be very cautious with cherry pick and use git rere if you do (git config --global rerere.enabled true)

7. Use interactive rebase for:

   a. Squashing and re-organizing commits

   b. Removing (dropping) commits from other feature branches (see 6B) before doing a pull request

   c. Command line example (from your dev branch): git rebase -i origin/master

8. Sometimes you will find that your local branch (or even your local master branch) gets corrupted. You can reset your local branch to the origin instance by performing the following:

   a. git fetch --all

   b. git reset --hard origin/your_branch_name