Been using production/integration branches to manage code promo to production. Our integration branch is a stable integration environment that all feature branches are made from, and merges are reviewed by PR, and deployed via CI when approved and squashed+merged. Once integration is stable and we've tested it, we do another PR from integration to production. When this is approved and squashed+merged, CI takes over and deploys to the production env.
git checkout integration
git checkout -b feature
# do work
git add/commit etc
# create PR, squash+merge on github UI when reviewed
# CI sees new commit to integration, deploys to int env
My issue is with what these integration -> production PRs looks like when they are reviewed - even though (at times) I've done the following to get any commits already in production into integration:
git checkout integration
git pull
git pull origin production
git push
# create PR for integration merge into production
When I go look at the PR page on Github, the list of commits shows history going back to commits that are already represented in production. The "Files changed" list is very small, while the commit history goes back many PRs ago. I thought git pull origin production would remove this history and then only show the new commits coming from integration to production?
Am I missing some obvious way to maintain merge commits but also clean up the history when integration is merged into production? Could inconsistent merging/rebasing strategies cause this?
Some screenshots to show what is confusing - a PR that has a single file changed from a single commit, but the commit history goes back much further:
The single file change was the last commit in the list—why does the PR show commits that have already been merged previously? I thought Squashing and Merging (both into integration from feature branches and into master from integration would remove this commit history and make merges into master clean?
The green arrow represents the 1 file changed in this PR, and I thought the commit history (after a merge of production back into integration to clean the history, if any) would only have that one commit.
Is this a github display bug or am I missing some principle of how git maintains commit history across a long-running branch that gets merged into another long running branch? It's always a one-way merge, from integration into production branch, for CI to deploy the update.
Related
I have a scenario where I will sometimes need to cherry-pick some commits from our UAT branch into our MASTER branch. This is because the business sometimes will request that only specific "features" are moved from UAT to production. I need to be able to pick certain commits to move forward as PR.
The issue I am having is that when try to cherry pick from one the commits (from the UAT branch) to master, Azure DevOps give me the error...
"Encountered conflicts when cherry-picking commit "42af19". This operation needs to be performed locally."
I am able to do this same pattern against my UAT, QA and Integration branches, I only have this issue against our master branch. I don't have any conflicts in the source branch so I don't believe its that. I also don't have any special rules for the master branch that should keep me from doing a UI based cherry-pick.
I really can't have our developers do this locally so I am hoping for some sort of option where they can use the UI for this.
We are using ADO to host the repo for our Salesforce code. We use another system that handles the CICD pipeline.
The high-level background for this is that we have may have 2 or more PR's that have been promoted and deployed to UAT, but the business may request that we only deploy certain ones. So some PR's might remain open against master for a few dev cycles. The issue is when other PR's move through and we need to promote them from UAT to master, ALL of the changes are getting added to the UAT > MASTER PR due to the fact that the code in the PR's that are in the holding pattern have not been committed to master, so the subsequent PR's would pick up those changes and try to merge them in, and we don't want that.
The thought is that we could cherry-pick commits from UAT as a PR. These only only contain the files we actually want to deploy, not EVERYTHING.
Hopefully someone can help me out with this scenario as I am a little stuck.
Thank you all very much for your guidance!
I have been working with a similar branching strategy for Salesforce. Normally in this situation, we would do the following:
Create a branch out of master - it will be used only to resolve conflict.
git checkout -b gs-pipeline/...
Cherry-pick a commit there, you can space separate them if there are many
git cherry-pick COMMIT-HASH1 OPTIONAL-COMMIT-HASH2
Solve Conflicts manually, save files, stage them, commit and push
Open Pull Request from gs-pipeline/... -> master
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to solve this within UI as far as I am concerned.
However, when you would down merge from master -> uat(directly or via a separate branch) that may solve your issue. It should be safe as things on master/PRD should already be on UAT and all lower environments.
I have two branches in Github. Master and CoolFeature.
When i check CoolFeature in Github i see that it is even with Master.
When i deploy through Team City the Master branch somehow i get a commit from the Master branch that is five commits behind. I can see it in Team City by checking the SHA1. Is there some feature i have missed?
When i deploy the CoolFeature branch then the latest changes works cause CoolFeature deploys the latest commit.
Edit:
When i checkout the master branch i get this message:
> git checkout origin/master
Note: checking out 'origin/master'.
You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental
changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this
state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout.
If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, you may
do so (now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example:
git checkout -b <new-branch-name>
HEAD is now at e86824af5...
The SHA1 hash refered e86824af5... IS the latest commit. And this is the one i want to be deployed. But TeamCity deploys a commit that is five commits behind this one. I can see it in the log comparing the SH1 hash ids.
Caveat: I am fairly new to both git and GitHub.
So, in my current setup, my team uses git flow Hotfixes (usually started and finished by a graphical tool such as GitKraken or IntelliJ) to make changes that have to be merged into two branches and pushed upstream in both. So for example the flow would be:
Pull latest from master
Start hotfix
Commit changes
Merge hotfix branch into both master and develop and push both upstream
We're now looking at moving our code into GitHub and would like to start using Pull Requests, for a couple of reasons:
CI hooks to run tests and stuff
a place to put code-specific comments not directly related to the underlying "issue"
avoiding the need for everyone to constantly be pulling the latest master/develop to their local machine so that they can merge changes
But in the case of Hotfixes, I'm not sure what to do because I'm merging into two branches but it really is one "action" so manually creating two pull requests seems weird, particularly since step 4) in our current flow is a single click.
Is there a smart way of handling this? My ideal case would be that pushing the Merge button on the Pull Request would just merge into both, but that doesn't seem to be an available option.
As you mentioned, a Pull Request has only one target branch, so you won't be able to push the hotfix to both master and develop by merging one Pull Request.
I'm also surprised you mention your step #4 - merging the hotfix branch to both master and develop and push upstream - is one action. While there's a high chance the merge from hotfix to master won't run into merge conflicts, I can't say the same for the merge from hotfix to develop since it could have been worked on since the last deployment to production.
My recommendation would then be the following:
Create one PR from hotfix to master and have someone review it to validate the fix
Once it's merged into master, create another PR from hotfix to develop and see if you run into merge conflicts
If that's the case, resolve the merge conflicts so the PR ends up in a state to be merged, and have someone review the PR
If there's no merge conflicts, then have someone review the PR
An alternative solution, if you really want to go down the automated path, would be to leverage both GitHub webhooks and API.
The webhook would allow you to be notified when a PR is merged. You could inspect the payload to make sure that the base branch starts with hotfix/ and the target branch is master. You could then react to that event by using the API to create a new PR from the same hotfix branch to develop.
It will involve some development, and the effort might not be worth since creating a PR via the UI is still quite easy and quick.
I have 2 branches - master and develop
I have been doing some pull requests in my develop branch where it contains 5 items, in which it is the same as the number of items in master.
However, someone did some commits and pushed in a few more items into the master branch, and hence now it has 8 items.
As my pull request in the develop is still not yet approved/merged, whenever I tried to update my pull request, I am getting the message stating that This pull request can't be merged. You will need to resolve conflicts to be able to merge and asked me to do the following:
git fetch origin master
git checkout develop
git merge FETCH_HEAD
git commit
git push origin HEAD
And this happens after I have 'pushed' out my commits, making me confused at times. Then I realized that it is asking me to re-add and re-commit in the additional 3 new items. So does this means I must ensure that the items and contents between these 2 branches of mine should be the same as always? I have always used git pull/fetch but will there be a better way for me to make sure?
What this means is that GitHub would like to merge your PR branch into master, but it can't, because there are conflicts. As you've discussed in the question comments, the best way to deal with this (usually) is to merge your master branch into develop on the command line. That will show you the conflicts and ask you to resolve them. Once you've completed and pushed that merge, the PR will be mergeable back into master using the green button on GitHub.
You could simply merge your deploy branch into master (which I realize sounds a bit more sensible). In that case, you'd be bypassing the PR entirely. You'd have to close the PR "unmerged", and separately you'd manually push the merge commit to master.
By doing it the first way,
you make a better audit trail by merging to master on GitHub, using the PR;
you give your team a chance to review your code after the merge, before it lands on master; and
if you have automatic tests (such as Travis CI or CircleCI) which check PRs, you give them a chance to run your merged code as well.
I am trying to get the hang of merging branches with the GitHub for Mac GUI. I'm not sure if it's me or the client at this point....
I have a repo with master, staging, production branches. I created a file in master called test.txt. I then added a test line to it. I committed and synced in the master. I merged from master to staging using the gui, then hit merge. I also re-clicked "branches in sync" to re-sync them. The new line shows up in GitHub under master, but not under staging. In my local repo, it shows both in sync with that latest commit.
My plan was to edit in master, merge to staging to deploy and test, rinse, lather & repeat until it's good, then merge to production (at this point all should be in sync).
Am I doing something wrong?
That looks like GitHub for Mac issue 3:
Merging branches does not recognize new changes to sync
It seems that when merging the receiving branch does not recognize that new changes can be synced with Github
Steps performed
add and checkout "experimental" branch
add/commit to experimental branch
merge experimental branch into master
master displays button "Branch in Sync" even though it is no longer in sync - pressing button does nothing
How to fix
add a new commit directly in master
"Sync Branch" appears and can sync to Github
The OP skinnygeek1010 reports:
I've found a nice workaround:
To merge master with staging, merge with the GUI.
When it's finished, switch to staging and then go to the drop down menu: Repository > Synchronize (Cmd S).
The merge will instantly show up on GitHub (won't work if you Sync in master though)