Contributing to a public project on Github, I made a fork.
Then I created a new branch (b1) to commit some features and I sent a pull request.
Then I did the same for completely different features: create a new branch (b2 from master), commit some modifications and send a pull request.
While I am waiting for my 2 pull requests to be accepted, I would like to use those modifications which are in branches b1 and b2.
What is the best/easy way to achieve that?
Merging b1 and b2 into master? But master won't be the same as upstream/master and if I create new branched they will include changes from b1 and b2
Create a new temporary branch to merge b1 and b2? But I need to keep this branch up to date with master until all my pull requests will be accepted
Create a new temporary branch to merge b1 and b2?
Yes: you should not modify a branch in use in the original repo, and always isolate your work in a dedicated branch.
If at any time you want to keep that new integration branch (for b1+b2) up-to-date compared to upstream/master, simply rebase it on top of a refreshed upstream/master:
cd /path/to/my/repo
git remote add upstream /url/of/original/repo
git checkout b1_b2
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/master
Related
I made some changes to several files of the project on a new branch (let's call it branch_a), I commited them, created the Pull Request, and it was recently reviewed and approved. It's still pending Merge on the master branch.
Now, someone asked for another change. It's a small supplemental change in 1 of the files edited in the first Pull Request.
What's the best way of doing this? Should I ask for the first Pull request to be merged and then create a new branch (branch_b), make my change and create a new Pull Request, ask for review and merge again?
Or is there a "cleaner" way, when the first Pull Request is somehow merged with the second one and we don't have to make 2 different merges?
If another change requested is a part of the same feature as in ‘branch_a’, then you can simply make change in the same branch, your PR request will show up those changes, but PR approval will be required again.
If another change requested is outside the scope of feature ‘branch_a’ and it is just a file is same between two changes, then you can create a new branch out of master say ‘branch_b’, complete your changes and raise PR for the same. After ‘branch_a’ is merged into master, you can rebase your second branch ‘branch_b’ to include updated master codebase into branch_b, (or vice-versa if branch_b is merged first).
This is especially useful if the order of merge is not decided in advance.
Below are the steps, for rebase, here ‘feature_branch’ is the name of your branch for which you want to perform rebase:
git checkout master
git pull origin master
git checkout feature_branch
git rebase master
Here you might get some conflicts(if there are any) multiple times as per number of commits in your feature_branch. You can resolve the conflicts manually and proceed with further process of rebase with below command:
git rebase --continue
At any point if you think that things are not going well and you would like to cancel rebase process, then execute below command:
git rebase --abort
Finally when all conflicts are resolved and you get message as successfully merged, then execute below command to push changes to origin:
git push --force origin feature_branch
for more information on rebase process follow link:
https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/rewriting-history/git-rebase
Branch off the first pull request branch, edit, add, commit, push, and ask for a second PR merging to the first branch. When the first branch is merged the second PR will be reconfigured automatically (by GitHub) to be merged into the main branch.
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 forked a master from upstream. I have created a branch, made some commits, and now want to issue a pull request. I want to know when my branch is merged by the user, will it get merged to the upstream master, or the user will have an option to create a new branch and merge my branch with it? Btw, I don't have push permission.
Where the Pull Request merges depends on how you create it, when you pick four things:
The base fork: Which fork of the repository the PR will be merged into
The base branch: Which branch in that repository the PR will be merged into
The compare fork: The fork with thew new code
The compare branch: The branch containing the new code
So if you configure the base to be upstream_repo:master, yes, when the PR is accepted, it will be merged to master.
For more, see GitHub's help on Using Pull Requests.
I am new to managing code revisions and need guidance on how to merge to code sets. I have a MASTER branch with my latest UI and I have a branch called "Feature-A" with lots of Django additions + template additions to the previous UI files.
Since I am new to Github, I want to take the safest approach incase I need to revert mistakes. Should I make a new brach of master and merge Feature-A into that branch or should I merge Feature-A directly into the MASTER?
Since you're new, I would say the best approach would be to create another branch (clone of master branch) and then merge feature A into that, and see if it works. If not, keep testing feature A to make it compatible. If it works, great! Just remove that extra branch and merge feature A into the master.
I.e.,
git checkout master
Then, create a new branch (git checkout -b 'featuretest')
Now, git branch shows
* master
* featureA
* featuretest
Then, do git checkout featuretest, and git merge featureA to merge it.
If the feature works, great! Remove the branch (git checkout master; git branch -d featuretest)
and do it for real (git merge featureA)
If the feature doesn't work, go back to the feature branch (git checkout feature) and keep testing.
I've made multiple commits to my local repository and now I intend to do pull request to submit these changes over to the source/master.
When I do a pull request, it automatically includes all of my commits. I couldn't locate a way to submit each commit in its own pull request. Could someone please give some pointer on how to do this on GitHub.
Update
To clarify on this question, I forked a new local repo from upstream/master. Then, in my noobie-ness, I made new files in my local master itself without branching repo out first. So, effectively, my question is with these changes committed to local master repo, is there a way to raise pull requests for each new file one by one, and not for all of them in one go.
Many Thanks.
I'm not sure if there is a better way in GitHub, but in general, you can create a new branch for each pull request, cherry-picking the commits you want for each request.
The new branches should preferably be based on upstream master to make the merge painless.
Using command line git, using origin as your own github remote repo, upstream is the upstream remote:
git checkout -b {my_pull_request_feature_branch} upstream/master
git cherry-pick {sha1_of_first_commit_for_feature_X} [sha1_of_another_commit_for_feature_X] ...
git push origin {my_pull_request_feature_branch}
Repeat for each pull request.
When you do a pull request on GitHub you can then choose which branch you want to send in your request.
A commit does not stand on its own, it always links to the full previous history. So if you ask to pull commit B which depends on your commit A, then you are also asking to pull A, because your work in B depends on it.
If you want to submit multiple independent pull requests, you should make sure that those commits are completely independent of each other. So they should be on their own branches. This also makes it easier for the project maintainers to integrate your pull request, as they can just merge the branch without having to cherry-pick stuff.