rbtools behavior with git branches

[Greg Burcher]

Having read the available documentation regarding using rbtools and git, I am still trying to understand how git reviews are working with our git branching strategy. Some things are not working as we expect.

We have a primary git repository origin/master. We have created a clone repository of master on the server where ReviewBoard is installed, and this repository is refreshed at intervals. All dev work is done on local branches off of master, and then merged back into master. We create a branch for each user story or defect that we work on. So the typical work pattern looks like this:

1. Dev creates a local branch off of master.

2. Dev makes changes in their local branch and commits.

3. Dev uses "rbt post" to create a review.

4. When review is complete, dev pushes branch to origin then merges to master.

This pattern works fine. From reading the rbtools docs, my understanding is that "rbt post" diffs my local committed branch workspace against the copy of master on the clone with the ReviewBoard server.

If, instead, the dev pushes their branch to origin and then uses "rbt post" to create a review, rbtools says there are no diffs. It is as if rbtools is comparing the local copy of the branch to the origin copy of the branch, or the same pushed commit level on the clone copy of master on the ReviewBoard server, even though this branch is not yet merged to master.

Also, some devs have suggested that they have seen diffs where it seems rbtools is comparing their local branch to their local copy of the master branch.

Can someone explain the behavior of rbtools relative to git branches in the branch/work strategy that I have described here?

I think we are doing pre-commit reviews, since our branch is never merged to master when we create the reviews. Even if we have pushed our branch to origin, rbtools should be comparing against master and not our branch, right? So this is not post-commit.

To sum it up, we always want rbtools to compare the local committed branch workspace to origin/master, or a clone of master local to the ReviewBoard server.

Thanks,

Greg

[Christian Hammond]

Hi Greg,

Which version of RBTools are you guys using?

Try setting the following in .reviewboardrc:

    TRACKING_BRANCH = ‘origin/master’

That will ensure that, by default, rbt post will base commits off of origin/master.

The important thing is making sure that developers are actually using your central repo as origin, and not their own clone. If their clone is named origin, you’ll get that sort of behavior, requiring they override by doing —tracking-branch=<your_central_remote>/master.

I’d have to see more about their individual repo setups and their tree of commits to really say for sure what’s happening, but that’s a good starting point for diagnosing what’s wrong.

Christian

-- 
Christian Hammond - chri...@beanbaginc.com
Review Board - http://www.reviewboard.org

Beanbag, Inc. - http://www.beanbaginc.com

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[Greg Burcher]

We had BRANCH = "master" in the .reviewboardrc, but no setting for TRACKING_BRANCH. The rbtools documentation says this:

--tracking-branch

Tracking branch from which your branch is derived (git only, defaults to origin/master)

The default can be set in TRACKING_BRANCH in .reviewboardrc.

So the default value for TRACKING_BRANCH should already be "origin/master". I will make that change anyway.

The docs say this about BRANCH:

--branch

Affected branch.

The default can be set in BRANCH in .reviewboardrc.

What exactly does "Affected branch" mean? Maybe we should not be setting this value to "master"? We are almost always working in some branch off of master, not in master directly. Shouldn't rbtools be able to determine the current git branch in the local environment? What is the default behavior if we do not specify BRANCH in the .reviewboardrc file?

Thanks,

Greg

[Greg Burcher]

forgot to show our rbtools version:

$ rbt --version

RBTools 0.6

[Greg Burcher]

Also, all devs use "origin" for the central repo.

[Greg Burcher]

So I just tried this out. I believe TRACKING_BRANCH defaults to origin/<currentBranch> instead of origin/master as documented on the rbtools page. That would explain the behavior that we were seeing when we did not specify TRACKING_BRANCH. Pushing to the remote branch on origin caused there to be no diffs when creating the review. Now that I have added TRACKING_BRANCH = "origin/master" into our .reviewboardrc file, now the diffs are created fine.

I also removed the BRANCH setting from .reviewboardrc. This only seems to change the "branch" value displayed in the review header area. Is there any other behavior associated with the BRANCH setting? Why can't rbtools determine the current git branch on its own?

Greg

On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 3:27:01 PM UTC-4, Christian Hammond wrote:

[David Trowbridge]

The BRANCH/--branch settings just fill in the "Branch" field on the review request.

-David

[Matthew Woehlke]

On 2014-08-12 16:39, Greg Burcher wrote:
> I also removed the BRANCH setting from .reviewboardrc. This only seems to
> change the "branch" value displayed in the review header area. Is there any
> other behavior associated with the BRANCH setting? Why can't rbtools
> determine the current git branch on its own?

(Rhetorical:) What does the 'branch' field in RB mean, anyway?

I have always taken it to be the intended merge target, which would be
'master' much of the time, but (heavily depending on the repository
workflow) not always. IMO RB does not presently have a proper notion of
'a symbolic name for this request via which it can be accessed given
some canonical remote'. (Which makes sense given RB's origin around the
svn era, but is something I'd really like to see added, if only for
reference purposes.)

Other sites may use the existing 'branch' field for that purpose. It
isn't really codified. Really, RB with git should have both; where you
want it merged to, and the symbolic name (if any) of the request. (And
also the SHA, if the code is at least locally committed, but I believe
2.x has that.)

Note that pre-commit is still a valid workflow; it's possible for
'target branch' to be meaningful and have more possible values than
'master' while 'local branch name' is empty / not applicable.

Given the above, I think it makes a lot of sense to have a default value
for target branch. I know that doesn't really help with your use case,
just trying to explain my take on why it works the way it does.

--
Matthew