With git, source code lives in a single working directory. When we switch from one branch to another, git rearranges our files for us. Usually this keeps things simple, but now and then I wish for two copies of the code. Do you ever want to run a big fat suite of tests in one …
If some team members use git-svn locally, they might have a local working branch. When the team moves to a central git repository, that work needs to come with them. In the old git-svn repo: 1) Find the revision where the local branch of interest branched off master: git svn find-rev `git merge-base $branch master` …
Read moreConverting from svn to git: salvaging local branches
Sometimes it behooves one to erase commits of large binaries from history. Binaries don’t play nicely in git. They slow it down. This post will help you find them and remove them like they were never there. In svn, people only download the latest version of the repository, so if you commit a large binary, …
Moving from svn to git, git-svn is your best friend. However, it is a recent best friend and doesn’t understand you some days. I’m working on moving a repository from sourceforge (in svn) to bitbucket (in git). Theoretically, I should be able to clone the repo into git locally, then push all the history up …
There is no silver bullet. What if there is a silver pill? It is no single change that can rocket our productivity. It is a change in the rate of change. There are two outputs of everything we write: some code, and a new version of ourselves. If we stop thinking of our product as …
If you’ve ever been burned by stash not stashing everything you wanted it to stash, or reset –hard not reseting everything you wanted to reset, then this post is for you. I used to think there were three places that files can be in git: the working directory, the staging area, and the repository. I …
Rebase is one of the most awesome commands in git. Use it to keep the local branch up to date with what’s going on in trunk. A rebase a day keeps merge conflicts away! In the form advocated here, rebase takes your branch’s local changes and applies them to the most recent code in the …
Why change history? Version control has two reasons for being: save your work, and tell the story of your project. These two goals are in conflict. The more often you save your work, the more jumbled and cluttered the story of your project. “Time for lunch” is a great reason to save your work, but …
Read moreGit: The Good Parts – history is written by the victors
Git is the best version control system available today, miles ahead of centralized VCS. It has beautiful, consistent concepts internally. But its API is crap. Commands and options are inconsistent, internal details are exposed, and there are many ways to perform the same operation. Let’s try to narrow the options to only the ones that …
Want to merge some good code into the master branch, but stymied by code you don’t care about causing a bunch of conflicts?The other day, some crap got committed to master and pushed, accidentally. It didn’t belong. Since it was pushed to origin, we don’t want to change history*. When it was time to do …