How to merge two git repositories containing Xcode projects - xcode

Picture the following scenario. I have an iPhone application contained in Xcode project A, and an iPhone application contained project B, each one of these Xcode projects is contained in a separate git repository. There are a bunch of things that I would like to do:
Be able to create a library or Framework from parts of project B that I would then use in project A or other projects. How can I create a Framework in Xcode, and then clone it into another project using git, so that any changes I make to the framework are reflected. Ideally the framework would remain part of the larger git repository and Xcode project B.
Without creating a framework, how can I do the above, namely, import a part of a git repository (call it B1) into another one A, so that I can still keep on developing and improving B1 as part of B, but can eventually see those changes in A?
Last point: is there an easy way to merge two Xcode projects (if they have fairly similar structure) using git, or a recommended way, at least to make it as painless as possible.

the first two you ask about can be done using
git submodule --add <remote repository>
manpage
As for merging you could try creating git project C with git project A and project B as remote repositories. Assuming no or little overlap in files they might just merge together seamlessly. I think however that submodules is probably a better bet.

The best solution I have found to this problem is basically to create a static library out of any code I want to use between the two projects, and then import that from the other Xcode project. Very well explained in this post here:
Shared Libraries
This allowed us to keep the repositories separate, but still pull from one another as needed.

Related

Git branches for Xcode targets

I developed 3 projects that, despite sharing 80% of the code, the way they get data is completely different. The sharing code is basically UI, helpers, some model classes, among others.
Now I have been able to create a single project that contains these 3 projects organised and structured by targets. I am also trying to achieve a branch creation for each target so, is there a friendly way to organise branches by targets in Xcode.
Maybe the question does not make a lot of senses. If so, let me know.
I think a better approach is to put the 80% common code into a .framework that is used by the 3 apps. The framework and the apps need their own git repo (so 4 total) and you can use git modules to import the framework repo into the app git repos.
Your approach is counter-intuitive as it's more conventional to have a separate git repo for each app and it can be fiddly to cherry-pick between branches if you are making changes to the common code.

Git: How to share only selected folders and files from a repository to allow 2 teams to collaborate on it, but not share the whole code base?

Let say there is a team working on main Git repository using branching model. Now a second team joins and is starting to work a subset of a project. As the starting point they need to collaborate on one folder from the repository. They are not allowed to see rest of the code base. What is the best way to achieve that?
Going forward they would need to be able to merge their changes into the main code base and get any updates from that one folder along the way too.
This is all based on Windows OS with Atlassian Stash and Git on internal network.
That would mean that one folder needs to be its own repo:
added as a submodule (tracking a branch) in the main Git repo
forked by the second team, for them to push to the fork and make PR or synchronize from the original folder git repo.
I would suggest separating the subset into a sub-project, and use language-specific ways to deliver it during building of you main project. For example, if you use MS Visual Studio, you could turn it into library or module and use nuget to deliver it during build of your main project.
In my experience it appears to be much more convenient than using submodules, when it comes to merging.
Another reason to do that - and maybe even more important one - that the other team would be able to handle the project as a compilable and testable unit, instead of a pile of source files.

Gradle - multiple project and git repositories

We have 3 projects and a 4th one that is shared among them.
A multiple project in gradle requires one to create a wrapper project and include all the sub projects in it.
Each of our sub projects are being worked on by different team members and we use git as an svn.
Our concern before going into gradle is the fact that we will only have 1 git repository that consists of the wrapper project with all sub projects instead of 4 different repos, each for each sub project.
1) Are we missing something?
2) Is it possible to create 4 repos on a multi project?
3) One of our requirements is to deploy a single war (for example only webapp #1 out of the 4)--does using the multi project template make it possible?
ad 1) You have some choices:
Use a single Git repo.
Use multiple Git repos and exchange artifacts via a binary repository (e.g. Artifactory), with artifacts being produced on a regular basis by CI jobs.
Use something like Github submodules to create a "virtual" overall Git repo (wouldn't recommend this one).
ad 2) Gradle doesn't really care how many Git repos the build is comprised of, as long as everything that settings.gradle points to (at least all build scripts) exists on disk when the build starts. Of course it may be inconvenient for developers (and CI admins) to juggle multiple Git repositories and put them in the right (relative) locations.
ad 3) Yes.
I stumbled across this question on the same quest, and only later somebody pointed out another option to me (it's really a variant of the third choice listed under ad 1 in https://stackoverflow.com/a/20678444/1016514), which seems like an elegant hack:
You keep the subprojects in separate Git repos, and from within your root project point to them by setting the respective rootDir properties. This requires a fixed checkout layout, obviously, but that would usually be the case anyway.
The approach is described here: https://medium.com/codequest/gradle-multi-project-build-substituting-jar-dependencies-with-local-projects-4a5323f8680b
Update with Gradle 7.3+: this will now yield a warning, and likely not work after some point in the future:
Subproject ':xyz' has location '...\xyz' which is outside of the project root.
This behaviour has been deprecated and is scheduled to be removed in Gradle 8.0.
Consult the upgrading guide for further information:
https://docs.gradle.org/7.3.1/userguide/upgrading_version_7.html#deprecated_flat_project_structure

How to deal with Git Submodules in Visual Studio solutions with different layout?

We develop with Visual Studio 2010 (in C#) and migrated a while ago from SVN to GIT. Now we try to split up our repository (which is quite big - ~30.000 files) to many git repositories - one for each solution.
The solutions share some projects, mostly libraries we develop in-house and like to add to from all the solutions.
The new repositories have a flat layout. One subdirectory for each project (shared projects are submodules).
In the big old repo, the projects are in a tree structure.
The Problem occurs with external references in the submodules. In the new repos, the path to a referenced project may be "......libs\someproject", while in the new layout the correct path would be "..\someproject".
We already had some edit wars concerning this and are not keen on more.
Half-baked Solutions I could think of:
use "Reference Paths" in ...csproj.user and exclude this file from version control (has to be redone for each developer and after each reopsitory cleanup)
use branches for each situation and try to teach everyone where "real" commits should go and where "environment-change" commits should go (submodules are already not the simplest concept...)
embed binaries instead of the submodules (but what about developing changes to the submodules? what about different log4net versions?)
Does anyone know of a sane solution?
Since you are asking for a sane solution, I can only advise you to look into setting up your own NuGet service (look at http://www.MyGet.org for inspiration)
http://nuget.codeplex.com/
IF you go down the route of package management, consider OpenWrap. However, embedding the package management artefacts in source code is a bad idea. You can use such tools to update what is actually stored in submodules, but don't rely on them at build time. Expect the binaries to be there from the point of view of your build scripts.
So if I understand you correctly, the problem is with Visual Studio and not with Git? If that's the case, use the old tree structure that worked with Visual Studio. Make your submodules structure a tree structure too. So the top of the tree would be one super repo whose sub modules (the branches) would have submodules of their own, until you get down to the leaves of your tree. It would be a pain to setup at first, but it should just work.
Use one submodule to house all "common libraries". Just one level. But you should move the common libraries as services with well defined contracts. This way you can incrementally rollout new versions with no down time. This way you only have a submodule in each that holds the contracts. These could be interfaces or messages.
I have a similar problem using VS 2013.
I want to use git-svn instead of SVN directly. SVN has a gigantic set of directories. I could not create a single git-repository that would contain all of our trunk folder. Git-always exited with an error and the repository was corrupted. I worked around the problem by doing as follows:
Using git-svn, I cloned the subset of folders off SVN/trunk that I needed by creating one git-repository per folder.
Created a local parent git repository that contains all my git-svn-cloned folders.
Each git-repository was added as a sub-module to the parent git-repository.
The problem with Visual Studio is that it does not recognize the multiple projects outside the main project where I opened the solution. This solution is in a folder that contains the only files recognized by Visual Studio as being under git-source control.
I tried setting the git-preferences to use the upper level parent directory as the location of the git-repostitory without noticing any difference.

Should Git Repo's be at the Solution Level or Project Level in Visual Studio

If I have a C# solution with multiple projects in it, what would be better, to have the Git repo created in the solution folder, or in each individual project folder? Multiple developers will be working on the projects. What are your experiences with this?
I use several (sometimes overlapping) solutions to contain a collection of related independent applications and shared libraries. As others have mentioned, you really don't want to have a single Git repository containing the source for multiple, independent projects as it makes it much too difficult to track isolated changes.
So, if your solution is structured as mine is then you will definitely want individual Git repositories for each project. This has worked well for me for ten to twelve applications and doesn't create as much maintenance overhead as you might think.
If your solution is truly monolithic (and you're sure you want it that way forever and ever), then it probably makes sense to only have a single repository.
It depends. git repositories are most suited to containing a single configuration item with its own independent lifecycle. If your projects have their own release cycle and are shared between multiple solutions then it might make sense to have them in their own repositories. Usually, though, it is the solution that represents a configuration item with all the constituent projects forming part of the same build. In this case a single git repository at the solution level makes more sense.
git submodule is probably worth consideration here. Each project gets its own repo, the solution gets a repo, and the projects are submodules.
I assume that your solution represents some kind of a product while the projects are just a part of the product.
In this situation I would create the repository on the solution level. This way it is a lot easier to build the whole product at once, especially if the projects depend on each other.
Some though and 3 solutions on the subject can be read on that blog:
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/git/git-and-project-dependencies
package management tool, i.e. nuget in VS, so using reference to a package/compiled module
git submodule (only with command line in VS?)
other build and cross-stack dependency tools
Another solution is just to add a project from the other repo and let it out of the current repo, and latter use the Team Explorer to commit its changes.

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