Eclipse Git - switch branch without merge - eclipse

This is maybe a dumb question, but I could not find a way to solve my problem. I am working with Eclipse and Git.
When switching and pulling branches to work on different features, the local commits of the previous branch are added to the commit history of the new branch.
Let say I am working on a branch A, commit twice, then I create from master a branch B, switch to this branch B, pull, and perform one commit. Now my branch B contains the changes made on branch A + the commit made on branch B, making it difficult to create a pull request to merge the change of the only commit B to master.
I would like my local commits/changes to be erased when switching to another branch. How can I do that with Eclipse Git?

After playing around with eclipse, I noticed there was two possible pull actions:
The default one does Fetch + merge, resulting in the mess described in the question
The other option allow you to select Fetch + rebase, to rebase your working directory to the state of the remote branch.
Based on this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/17324792/10631518 you can even make rebase the default behaviour by running
git config branch.autosetuprebase always

Related

Update branch with rebase instead of merge

Is there any way to replace merge with rebase at GitHub PRs? I looked through protected branches settings but didn't find such option.
GitHub now (Feb. 2022) supports this:
More ways to keep your pull request branch up-to-date
The Update branch button on the pull request page lets you update your pull request's branch with the latest changes from the base branch.
This is useful for verifying your changes are compatible with the current version of the base branch before you merge.
Update your pull request branch by rebasing:
When your pull request's branch is out of date with the base branch, you now have the option to update it by rebasing on the latest version of the base branch.
Rebasing applies the changes from your branch onto the latest version of the base branch, resulting in a branch with a linear history since no merge commit is created.
To update by rebasing, click the drop down menu next to the Update Branch button, click Update with rebase, and then click Rebase branch.
Previously, Update branch performed a traditional merge that always resulted in a merge commit in your pull request branch. This option is still available, but now you have the choice.
Note: Because rebasing rewrites the history of the branch, if you are working with the branch locally, you will need to fetch it and do a hard reset to ensure your local branch matches the branch on GitHub.com.
Learn more about keeping your pull request in sync with the base branch.
I doubt github supports this, as you should never rebase a public branch. From the official git docs:
Rebasing (or any other form of rewriting) a branch that others have based work on is a bad idea: anyone downstream of it is forced to manually fix their history. This section explains how to do the fix from the downstream’s point of view. The real fix, however, would be to avoid rebasing the upstream in the first place.
The easiest solution would be to simply use a merge. If you don't like that for any reason, you could create a new branch from main, apply the desired changes (e.g. by using git cherry-pick, or git diff in conjunction with patch), and then delete the old branch and create a new PR. If you really want to use rebase, you can do so locally and force-push the branch, but again, that's a really bad idea as it falsifies history and breaks the branch for everybody else.

How to merge to a branch that is behind in network in Gitlab?

I am quite new with Gitlab and I'm having an issue for merging in Eclipse.
We're working as a team, and we all have development branches that we are trying to merge into a single one. Unfortunately, when I did my merge, I have done a stupid mistake. Instead of merging my development branch to the main one, I have merged the main one into my development branch.
I have reversed the commit/merge on gitlab, but now as I try to merge back my development branch into the main one on Eclipse, it seems like I am 9 commits ahead of this branch (described as the arrows on Eclipse here: ), so the potential merge would basically replace everything by my code, when I should actually have merge conflicts to solve.
I am not quite sure how to merge properly so that I get back these merge conflicts.
Here is a screenshot of my network:
The ['1'] commit in the network on the left branch (my branch) corresponds to the merge from Week6AllIssues to my dev branch (the wrong merge). The last commit on this left branch is me reversing the commit.
Thanks a lot for your help !
If you're not using the remote branch with anyone else, the following series of steps might help.
First, remove the superfluous commits from the local branch. It can be achieved with git reset --hard <the commit before you merged master into your branch> command (see this link on how to do this with Eclipse).
Now make the remote branch match your local branch. You can do this with git push --force command. In Eclipse, this command corresponds to configure push - enable "force update" option.
Now the superfluous commits are gone.

How do "reuse" a branch on Bitbucket / Sourcetree after merge

I was working on a branch of my Bitbucket repo (lets call it "frontend-dev"), which has now been merged with the master branch. I would like to branch again to make further changes, without creating a new branch. How do I branch and get back onto "frontend-dev".
I am using Sourcetree to manage version control.
Normally merging to master does not close or delete the branch. If there are changes in master since the merge from "frontend-dev", you can merge back to "frontend-dev". Either way, you can then simply switch your working copy to "frontend-dev" and continue developing.
Another question discusses what to do when you have closed or deleted the branch: Restore Merged Branch in Bitbucket Repo

Egit pull and merge changes

I was working locally on master branch. (by mistake) but it's ok with me this time as I control my code.
I took the following steps:
Egit->commit and push (to master)
Egit -> pull (to get other developers changes)
I got a message that there is a conflict with one file and I merged it.
Now I see: [My Product | Merged Master (up arrow)2 (down arrow)1]
I see in the symbols next to the files that the other developers created - black sign as if there are uncommitted.
A. What does the 2 up arrow and 1 down arrow mean?
B. Why do I see uncommitted changes? they are not mine
C. How can I work out on master after my merge?
D. I looked in bitbucket and didn't see that my changes were committed to the remote branch. What is wrong?
I know that I am supposed to work on branches - but for now - how do I fix the situation?
A. Two arrows up means you have two commits in your local branch that aren't in the remove branch. The one arrow down means there is one commit in the remote branch that you don't have locally. The solution is to do a git pull followed by a git push
B. Uncommitted changes are probably from your conflict. After a conflict, you have to resolve the conflict, add it to index and then commit that change. This is known as a merge commit. My guess is you have not done this.
C. Work out on master? You mean you want to work directly on top of master? After you resolve your conflict, you should be all set to do that. Branching is better though. To create your own branch just do git checkout -b my_featue_branch

Can mercurial pull changes from forked repo into a new branch?

I have a project, biocommons/hgvs. A contributor forked the project, made some changes, and submitted a pull request. I'd like to make some minor changes to those commits, and I'd prefer to do so in a feature branch.
Is there a way to pull the PR commits into a new branch?
You cannot pull them in another branch in a sense how mercurial uses branch (as in named branch created by hg branch).
However, you simply can continue to work on top of your latest commit and later merge your head and the head created by the pull request, thus both, yours and their head being anonymous branches. (IMHO this is the beauty - every head can work on its own, no need to expressly branch or name things)
If you still want a name, you can stick a bookmarks onto the head of the pulled changes; they work very similar to 'full' branches except that they can be changed and moved.
If you really need and want the changesets to be in a named branch, then pull from the forked repository, create the named feature branch manually and use rebase or histedit to move the commits to the just created feature branch.