Branchy Django developement on GitHub

[mrts]

Many core developers and the GSOC folks use GitHub for
Django development, so I hope discussing the best
practices is appropriate for django-dev.

Let me outline the desired workflow, please amend and
correct as you see fit as there are probably errors or
omissions. I expect various useful patterns and workarounds
for problems have emerged which could be shared with the
larger community. I'll create a proper guide in the wiki
once feedback has been collected.

Assumptions
-----------

You want to work on several fixes and features (tasks) and
* keep the changes for a particular task selt-contained in
a branch,
* frequently update the codebase with upstream changes,
* have a has-it-all branch for testing out how the
different task branches interact.

You have created a fork of django/django on GitHub,
`git clone`d the work to local machine, added the upstream
repository with `git remote add upstream`.

Working on a task
-----------------

Goal: keep the changes self-contained, create and update
patches suitable for attaching to tickets in Django trac.

# branch from master
$ git checkout -b ticket1234 master
$ ... change files, commit often ...
$ ... run tests ...
# create the remote branch and push changes into it
$ git push origin ticket1234
# create a patch, attach it to a relevant ticket in trac
$ git diff master > ticket1234.patch

After upstream has changed
--------------------------

Goal: bring in the changes in upstream to a task.

# pull in upstream changes
$ git pull upstream master
$ git checkout ticket1234
# merge, fix any conflicts
$ git merge master
# push changes to GitHub, remote branch assumed to exist
$ git push
# update the patch
$ git diff master > ticket1234.patch

Testing everything in the has-it-all branch
-------------------------------------------

Goal: a place to try out the code from all tasks together.
'master' can not be used for this as it is used for tracking
upstream. This is a temporary branch that can be removed
after testing is done.

$ git checkout -b has-it-all master
$ git merge ticket1234
$ git merge ticket1235
$ ... run tests ...
# delete the branch
$ git checkout master
$ git branch -d has-it-all

------------

This is just a (untested) skeleton. All help in improving it,
adding caveats and tricks most welcome.

Best,
Mart Sõmermaa

[Simon Willison]

Thanks for putting this together - that's a really useful summary of
commands. Any chance you could save it on the wiki somewhere?

Cheers,

Simon

[mrts]

There's http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/CollaborateOnGithub
that I wrote some time ago, but it doesn't give guidelines for
branchy development.

I will update that page with these instructions, but it would be
excellent if others who have collaborated more intensively via
GitHub could amend the text if needed.

Best,
MS

[mrts]

On Oct 5, 7:08 pm, mrts <mrts.py...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There'shttp://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/CollaborateOnGithub

> I will update that page with these instructions,

Done. Any comments and amendments should probably go to the wiki page
now.

Best,
MS