Whenever I make a pull request on Github, in the commit tree it shows tons of previous commits that were made starting 13 days ago. How do I get rid of all that?
My git flow is usually:
git pull master
git checkout -b "another branch"
git add
git commit -m "message"
git push origin master
If, while checked out on another branch, you run git rebase master, another branch will essentially become the most recent master plus all the commits you have added to another branch since you created it.
I would recommend reading a short tutorial about rebasing if you haven't done it before.
The normal GitHub flow to contribute to a repo is to create a fork of the upstream, clone a local copy where you make changes, then push back up to your fork and then create a PR to have your changes merged into upstream.
But if upstream changes after that, how do you update your fork without creating a merge commit (and also without using the git CLI)?
I already know how to do this in a way that will create a merge commit or which depend on the git command line interface. This question is specifically about using the GitHub.com website or GitHub Desktop application only (no CLI).
Since this is a very common workflow it seems like there should be some simple way to do it using the GitHub GUI.
To reiterate: any answers that use the CLI or create a merge commit (e.g. this way) will not be answering this question since I'm explicitly looking for a non-CLI solution.
without a merge commit or using CLI?
Not directly with GitHub web UI alone, since it would involve rebasing your PR branch on top of upstream/master
So in short: no.
But in less short... maybe, if you really want to try it.
Rebasing through GitHub web UI is actually possible, since Sept. 2016, ...
if you are the maintainer of the original repo, wanting to integrate a PR branch
if none of the replayed commit introduces a conflict
(This differs from GitHub Desktop, which, since June 5th 2019 does support rebasing. But that is a frontend to Git CLI, like other tools provide. For example GitKraken and interactive rebase)
So a convoluted workaround would be:
to fetch, then push upstream/master to the master branch of your own fork (a CLI operation, but more on that below)
change the base branch of your current PR to master (so a PR within the same repository: your own fork), provided you haven't pushed to master.
Meaning: master in your fork represents the updated upstream/master, with upstream being the original repository that you have forked.
Since you are the owner of that repository (your fork), GitHub can then show you if you can rebase said branch to the base branch of the PR (master), but only if there is no conflict.
finally, change the base branch again, to <originalRepo>/master (which is the intended target of your PR)
The very first step is typically done through command line, but... there might be a trick to do it (update upstream master in your fork) through web UI: see "Quick Tip: Sync a Fork with the Original via GitHub’s Web UI" by Bruno Skvorc
In short, it involves:
creating a new branch from your current master (which would be at upstream/master at the time you forked the original repository)
Making a PR with that new branch and <originalRepo/master>
doing a base switch before creating the PR
That is the step which artificially forces upstream/master to be refreshed
You can the create and merge it with the “Merge Pull Request” button (and “Confirm Merge” afterwards): the merge will be trivial: no merge commit.
The end result is: your own master branch (in your fork) updated with upstream/master (the master branch of the original repository)!
You can then resume the steps I describe above, and change the base of your current PR to your own (now refreshed) master branch, and see if you can rebase it!
This is feasible with GitHub Desktop since version 1.0.7 considering the following:
If the current branch does not have any commits ahead upstream (the original repo of the fork), the new commits can be pulled without creating a new merge commit
In GitHub Desktop:
Clone your repository from File > Clone Repository
Fetch origin, which will automatically fetch the upstream as well
Go to Branches by clicking on where it says Current Branch
Click on Choose a branch to merge into <branch> at the bottom
Search for upstream/<branch>, then click Merge upstream/<branch> into <branch>
Push to origin, et voilà!
Otherwise, ff the current branch has commits ahead of the fork, then of course one has to create a merge commit or rebase and force push. For rebasing which might be more preferable, do the following:
In GItHub Desktop, go to Branch from menu, then Rebase Current Branch
Search for upstream/<branch>, then click Start Rebase
Solve any conflicts that have occurred from the rebase
Force push to origin. You will get a warning for this for obvious reasons.
For avoiding force-pushing to your work when your current branch is both ahead and behind its upstream counterpart, either create a new merge commit or:
Make a new branch based with all your changes
If needed, reset the original branch to its original state (before it diverged from the original repo)
Perform the steps from the first scenario and merge your changes into your branch.
And yes, it seems that pulling via the GitHub website from the original repo without creating a pull request and merge commit is not possible at this moment.
Demo GIF for first scenario: https://imgur.com/a/8wci2yf
Some GitHub issues related to this:
Add an upstream to forked repositories
multi-remote support in Desktop
Update
Note: Non-CLI based approach that might help:
Is there a way to make GitHub Desktop rebase a branch against master?
The only key here is doing a rebase, so the above answer should help.
CLI way (which is easier and using git, so it should be more comprehensive by default)
There are some practices that you should use to avoid this.
Don't work on the master branch in your fork.
$ git clone <your fork>
$ git checkout -b feature_branch
You can work in your feature_branch and then raise a Pull Request.
Once your changes are merged in the upstream master, you can pull from upstream to your origin. Since the master on upstream will have your commits sitting neatly on top of it, there won't be a merge commit.
$ git checkout master
$ git pull upstream master
$ git push origin master
In the case, where the maintainer has diverged from the master that you have in your fork, that is, it's not linear any more, you need to pull a fresh copy of it. That should not be a problem as your changes are already in the upstream.
If the master in upstream has moved ahead while you were working on your PR, then you can rebase on you feature_branch.
$ git checkout master
$ git pull upstream master
$ git push origin master
$ git checkout feature_branch
$ git rebase master
Please refer to this document for detailed reference: Fork and pull request workflow
I have a feature branch on git and I set is as a Pull Request.
I've made 3 commits to the feature branch but the latest commits are not showing up in the pull request page.
Is there a way to update my pull request to show the latest commits from the feature branch?
Check first your git status
you must be on the feature branch and not on a detached HEAD
your branch should be ahead of origin/feature branch
the remote feature branch should be the one from which the PR has been initiated.
I'm new to Github and I have a branch that I want to merge with the master. I couldn't merge it via git command line, its very complicated.
I tried to merge it on Github site following below documentation:
Merging a pull request on GitHub
But I got the following message:
There isn’t anything to compare!
Here's the project:
https://github.com/SumayahAlharbi/erecords
What does 4 commits behind master mean?
Update
Please check below pictures:
I thought I did the merging successfully but nothing changes!
What does 4 commits behind master mean?
It means that the master branch has 4 commits which are not present in your branch currently. You need to rebase your branch and then create a New Pull
Request which will be needed to be reviewed and finally approved so
that your branch can be merged with the master.
There isn’t anything to compare!
Check the difference between the master and your branch. Click the Compare icon in Git hub or run this
command from your local branch in Git Bash : git diff --name-only master_branch.
I just checked your repo. The changes of ExportFeature branch are already merged into the master branch, and then the merge is reverted. That's why now if you raise a pull request to merge ExportFeature into master, you would get There isn’t anything to compare!.
See the latest commits on ExportFeature which are already present in the master branch.
The reason you are seeing 4 commits behind master on ExportFeature branch is since the master branch has 4 more commits than the ExportFeature branch. If you see the total commits on ExportFeature branch, it's 7, whereas the total number of commits on the master branch is 11. If you need to do any more changes on the ExportFeature branch, you would need to get the latest changes from the master branch by running the command git pull origin master when your current branch is ExportFeature on your local git terminal.
In one of case I have created an branch and started to work on. I keep on commit & push changes in local branch but did not merge in master & neither pulled any changes from master.
Now I'm done with local branch changes. I followed derekgourlay tutorial & followed following steps to merge my project.
git fetch origin
git rebase −p origin/develop
First it game me number of conflict which was obvious but changes that I committed in my local branch those are not there after merge.
Am I missing anything. Any suggestion?
You can merge develop branch with your feature branch.
$ git checkout feature
$ git pull origin develop # pull (fetch + merge) develop branch into feature
$ git push origin HEAD # update remote/feature