We work with a git respository that has over 20,000 files.
My group maintains local versions of about 100 or so of configuration and source files from this repository. THe original acts as a sort of base that several groups modify and tweak to their own needs (some core things are not allowed to be changed, but front end and some custom DB stuff are different between groups)
So we want to update to the latest version generally, but not have the git update overwrite the files that we keep local modifications for.
The machines we use are windows based. Currently the repository gets cloned to a windows server that then gets checked out/cloned to the development machines (which are also windows). The developers make changes as necessary and recommit to our local repo. The local repo updates against the master daily. We never commit back to the master.
So we want all the files that haven't been changed by our group to update, but any that have been changed (ever) won't get updated.
Is there a way to allow this to happen automatically, so the windows server just automatically updates daily, ignoring those files we keep modifications for. And if we want to add a new file to this "don't update" list its just a right-click (or even a flat file list away). I looked at git-ignore but it seems to be for committing, not for updating.
Even better would be a way to automatically download the vanilla files but have them renamed automatically. For example settings.conf is a file we want to keep changes on generally, but if they modify the way entries in that file are handled or add extra options it would be nice it it downloaded it as settings.conf.vanilla or something so we just run a diff on .vanilla files against ours and see what we want to keep. Though this feature is not absolutely necessary and seems unlikely.
If this cannot be accomplished on a windows machine (the software for windows doesn't support such features), please list some Linux options as well if available. We do have an option to use a Linux server for hosting the local git repo if needed.
Thanks.
It sounds like you're working with a third party code base that's under active development and you have your own customisations which you need to apply.
I think the answer you're looking for is rebase. You shouldn't need to write any external logic to achieve this, except for a job which regularly pulls in the third party changes and rebases your modifications on top of them.
This should also be more correct than simply ignoring the files you've modified, as you won't then accidentally ignore changes that the third party has made to those files (you may sometimes get a conflict, which could be frustrating, but better than silently missing an important change).
Assuming that your local repo is indeed simply a fork, maintain your changes on your own branch, and every time you update the remote repository, simply rebase your local branch on top of those changes:
git pull origin master
git checkout custom_branch
git rebase master
Edit
After you've done this, you'll end up with all the changes you made on your custom_branch sitting on top of master. You can then continue to make your customisations on your own branch, and development of the third party code can continue independently.
The next time you want to pull in the extra changes, you'll repeat the process:
Make sure you're on the master branch before pulling in changes to the third party code:
git checkout master
Pull in the changes:
git pull origin master
Change to your customised branch:
git checkout custom_branch
Move your changes on top of the third party changes:
git rebase master
This will then put all your own changes on top of master again. master itself won't be changed.
Remember that the structure of your repo just comes from a whole set of "hashes" which form a tree. Your branches are just like "post it" notes which are attached to a particular hash, and can be moved to another hash as your branch grows.
The rebase is like chopping off a branch and re-attaching it somewhere else. In this case, you're saying something like "chop off our changes and re-attach them on top of the main trunk".
If you can install a visual tool like GitX, it will really help to see how the branch tags move around when you rebase. The command line is ideal for working with but I find something like GitX is invaluable for getting a handle on the structure of your repo.
Related
I'm new to git and have a git repository that I use with GitKraken.
In this repository I have multiple branches, and can move from branch to branch in order make modifications where necessary.
I am now in a situation where I'll be making some large modifications to 1 branch that I do not want to commit but in the meantime I would like to make some minor modifications to another branch.
I'm used to work with TFS and there I can just checkout branch to another folder.
I've tried to just copy the folder and my first impression is that this should work....
But, I have seen online remarks that say that I should clone a repository instead.
The git version is lower then 2.5 so I can't use Git-worktree.
Is it ok to just copy the folder or can this have an unexpected effect?
Yes, if you copy the whole folder from the root of the checkout, including the hidden .git folder, then you can make changes to each working copy independently. Each contains their own copy of the repository objects and they will behave exactly as if you have run two separate clones.
As discussed in the comments this isn't necessarily a good use case for this, though: it would be easier (and more disk-space-efficient) to commit your large changes to a local branch so that you can then switch and make other changes. There's no real downside to this; if you do want to remove that temporary commit later then that's easily done as well.
However if you are going to do this, then you probably want to
run a git repack -ad first, so that there are fewer files in the objects tree to copy
consider using git clone --reference instead, which might be slightly more disk-space-efficient
or you want a clean working copy you can create a new working copy folder, copy only the hidden .git folder into the new working copy and then git reset --hard to check out all of the files there too.
You may want to see if git stashing will work for you. I don't recommend copying to a new folder. Mostly because I don't know if it's even possible and I've never seen that as a recommendation. Cloning should also work but it sounds like you are interested in shelving/stashing vs. committing your changes in branch1 before checking out branch2.
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v1/Git-Tools-Stashing
I am working on a Swift based XCode project that is synced with Git based master repository. One of my team member has added few files, to the master which I have pulled.
I find those files in my project directory, but not in my project. When I am manually trying to add these files to the project, in that case, I am getting Modify tag on my project, then I am unable to pull new changes from master.
This is very annoying. How do I take care of this.
Also, how do we make sure as a team that everyone of us is working separately on different module, and make surely everyone is able to commit/pull each other's changes.
The project folder with M tag is prohibiting us from doing so.
Edit 1
I have followed steps for this as well
git rm -r --cached ProjectName.xcodeproj
git commit -m "Removed file that shouldn't be tracked"
Even after doing this,
I had made changes in File1.swift, with my team member's changes in File2.swift
He had already committed it, I wanted to pull those changes, however due to changes in File1.swift I was unable to pull it.In order to make it work, I had to discard changes in File1.swift and then only I was able to pull those changes. If this is so, then it is defeating the purpose of using git
Xcode project files
The Xcode project file, or to be more precise, the pbxproj file inside the xcodeproj container keeps track of all files (among other things). Unlike Eclipse, Xcode does not monitor your source/project folder for changes thus does not update the list of files which can lead to inconsistencies after a merge.
Merge conflicts
If your team member adds or removes a file in his local copy of the repository and pushes his changes to the server, he basically overwrittes the pbxproj and therefore updates the list of files of the Xcode project. If you pull those changes there are two possible scenarios:
Git can merge the changes automatically which usually means it will keep your copy of the pbxproj file without the updated file references.
Git cannot merge the changes and therefore indicates a merge conflict that you need to resolve yourself. Depending on the differences and amount of changes these merge conflicts can be pretty annoying to resolve. Sometimes it might be easier to just delete your copy of the pbxproj file, use the one from the server and reapply your local changes, e.g., add file references.
In both cases you might need to compare your pbxproj file against the one from the server and merge things by hand. And yes, your project file will be marked with an M (for modified) which is perfectly fine. Just commit your changes and you are good to go again.
One more thing: Whenever you want to pull changes from the git server you can either stash your changes (git stash) or commit them.
Avoiding merge conflicts
In case you want to avoid merge conflicts in the future, I recommend having a look at the following tools.
Cocoapods
Cocoapods can be used to modularise your project into smaller pieces by creating private Pods. The benefit of this technique: You do not have to keep track of newly added or removed files. Just run pod update and you are up and running again. There are several blog posts that describe this technique in detail, e.g., here
phoenx
At my former company we had a pretty huge codebase and ran into some trouble when using Cocoapods. Therefore, we have developed our own meta-build system called phoenx. Phoenx can generate Xcode project and workspace setups of arbitrary complexity. It uses metadata files (something like Podfiles and Podspecs) to generate the projects etc. . Build settings will be stored in xcconfig files. At the moment it does not provide any setup tool so you have to invest a bit of time to write the xcconfig and metadata files by hand. We are working on a more convenient way to use it though. If you want to give it a try you can install it via sudo gem install phoenx. Documentation is available on GitHub.
Hope that helps!
I'm running into an issue where branch merging fails because Crashlytics binaries are changing. I added Crashlytics to the gitignore, but now the framework doesn't show up if I checkout branches anymore.
Is there a way to deal with the merge conflicts or a way to tell git to ignore changes to the file, but keep the file itself?
If you want the file in a fresh clone, or after cleaning a git repository it needs to be tracked by git.
Binary files are not pretty to merge. From you question it sounds like there isn't anything to merge, but the decision is just which file to keep.
One thing you could do is define custom automatic merge behavior for these binaries via .gitattributes and .git/config settings:
Add the following to your .gitattributes (or create a new file with that content in the root of your git repository)
path/to/file merge=nomerge
and place the following into a git configuration file (.git/config, or ~/.gitconfig)
[merge "nomerge"]
name = keep current version
driver = true
This instructs git just ignore the conflict and keep the file from the branch into which you are merging.
The driver = true specifies an external program to use for merging. In this case the program is true which should be available on any unix like system and does nothing successfully.
See the gitattributes manpage section on Defining a custom merge driver on ways to add real custom logic if you need something smarter.
On could do really complex things like always keeping the higher version of the file, if there is any version indicator in file for example.
You should git add the .gitattributes file to the repository. The actual merge driver definition can't be stored in a way that new clones get it automatically out ouf the box. So you need to add this manually into each clone or in the per user config on every computer where you need it.
I'm doing a single developer Visual Studio solution and reached a point where I'd like to incorporate Versioning Control. Several posts address this issue, but one problem I'm facing is a large merge. I have a production copy of the solution and a beta copy. They are NOT dramatically different, but they will require a number of interactions I suspect. I'm using TortoiseSVN and have imported the production version.
Yes, I know I should have used Version Control from the start, but that is hind sight. Would it be best practice to simply use the beta as a reference and work the interations from scratch. Or should I branch off and import the beta separately, then attempt to merge the change. Or is there another alternative I'm missing.
Thanks,
dgp
well, I have experienced SVN in the past ... and I must say, it's lovely cause it's really easy to understand the concept, but it's awful terrible when things pass from the plain commit.
I'm currently using GIT (to host small code on GitHub) and Mercurial (Hg) (I use Kiln in the company - was recommended by myself so they can start using - and in BitBucket for personal use)
I have used SVN for more than a hole year and every time I need something from "the past" or to merge something, it was a nightmare, but the server/client concept was really a break deal and extremely easy to get it... but I found my self, over and over to do merging by hand :(
When GIT started to be hot, I was afraid to move as, dang! SVN was a pain, why should be different in a DVCS?
This videos rocked my world, [ part 1 part 2 ], only then I understood DVCS vs VCS and it was with this that I moved COMPLETELY to DVCS and never go back... proudly!
For your problem, I would install git (or hg), and then create a repository on the folder you have your current source with:
git init will tell your folder, "Hey, I'm a GIT Repo"
git add . let's add all files and folders to be tracked by git
git commit -m "initial commit" let's save all the hard work :)
So, now you have a tracked code, you can simple create a branch and overwrite all your files. YES, worry not, you don't need to have copies of your code in a folder called branch ;) no more copies! all is in the GIT database
then, after creating the branch, changed the files, added all files to be tracked on that branch and committed, safely do a merge :)
ohh, and you don't need a server connection to do all this, all you need is a computer with GIT installed... no more connection dependencies! DVCS is cool or what?! :D
Using TortoiseGit (I'm trying to avoid command line usage) how does one delete all commits that accended from a certain commit, and "get back in the past" (example usage: continued doing something, figured I didn't like where it was going, and decided to go "back" disregarding all in between).
In short I wish to go 5 commits "back", and delete them afterwards.
Go to TortoiseGit -> Show log. Select the most recent commit you want to keep, everything above will be erased. Then right click on it and select "Reset "master" to this" and choose Hard. Be careful though because once you do this all the commits after it will be forever lost unless they are stored off in another branch somewhere.
I've never used Tortoise anything (unless you count the electronica group), but I'll give you this info in case you don't find a way to do it with the GUI or you end up deciding to go CLI after all.
As #Tuxified mentions, you can accomplish this with git reset --hard <COMMIT>. You need to specify a commit, which can be done in any of an intimidating panoply of possible ways; the most common have forms like HEAD~4, which specifies a commit 4 commits before the head of the current branch, and deadbeef42, which specifies a commit whose SHA1 starts with 0xdeadbeef42. If you're running linux or OSX, you can get the full details on commit specifiers via man git-rev-parse, under "SPECIFYING REVISIONS".
You can also rename the current branch (git branch -m new_branch_name) and then create a new branch with its head at the place you want to revert to. The advantage is that if you end up wanting to use all or some of the stuff you did there, you can still readily access it; and if you typo the commit, you're saved from a big holycrap moment. Plus git branches are super lightweight so the only real downside is that there will be another branch listed. To make the new master branch you would use git branch master <COMMIT>, and then you check it out. So the net effect here is the same as the first option, except that you still have your old changes saved in the branch new_branch_name. You can even merge those changes back in later, after new commits to master, if you feel like it.
Note that either of these techniques are considered "rewriting history" and will cause issues if you're sharing your repo with others. If you're being smart and pushing to a backup repo in cloud city or another pc, you will have to fix things on that end before you can push to it again.
This is probably way more info than you need right now, but if you end up using git a lot you'll probably want to learn this stuff at some point. Sorry I don't know how to use Tortoise...