Re: How to maintain private/secret/confidential branch.

Well, I am still a beginner in git. I just switched from mercurial.
Some inline follows:

2008/12/15 Daniel Barkalow [off-list ref]:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2008, Łukasz Lew wrote:

quoted

Hi Alexander,

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 17:06, Alexander Potashev [off-list ref] wrote:

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Hello, Łukasz!

On 16:38 Sun 14 Dec     , Łukasz Lew wrote:

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Thanks Nick, thats really helpful (and surprisingly simple).
I have a couple more questions:

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 15:55, Nick Andrew [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 02:49:50PM +0100, Łukasz Lew wrote:

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I don't know how to make such a scenario work:
- two repositories: pub, priv
- priv is clone/branch of pub
- there is some constant developement both in pub and priv
- there are regular syncs with pub in priv

Problem:
Occasionally I want to push some changes from priv to pub.
Then after syncing with pub I want to get as few conflicts as possible.

Is it possible to do with git?

Git can do almost anything. One should instead ask "How to do this
with git?" :-)

So I've heard, but not yet experienced it myself. I'm thrilled to try.

quoted

If I understand your problem, you could solve it with git cherry-pick
and rebase. On priv, make a for-public branch from a pub branch. Then
cherry-pick the commits you want from your private branch into the
for-public branch.

That almost works. Can I somehow split existing commits just like in git-add -p?

It's, however, better to make more commits to not experience the need of
commit splitting.

Indeed good advice and best practice, but another best practice is to
not commit not compiling state.

In your private branches, it's actually good practice to commit all sorts
of junk. That way, when you mess up badly while trying to get it to
compile, you won't have lost your work. Of course, that means your commits
are going to need more cleanup before going public.

I started to follow your advise.
Then I rebase -i.
I found out I need more precise commit messages. :)

quoted

My common scenario is that I code a big change in priv repository, and
after that I find that some of its parts can and should be moved to
pub.

I usually end up with my private branch containing the public branch, plus
a bunch of commits that introduce: bugs, later fixed; mixed improvements;
and debugging cruft. I want to generate nice commits that are individual
improvements. I generally do:
$ git checkout -b submit origin/master (the first time, to set it up)

$ git checkout submit
$ git diff submit mixed-work
look at it for good changes, find some in file1 and file2
$ git diff submit mixed-work -- file1 file2 | git apply

But with this command we do not preserve objects identity.
I.e: when you merge with mixed-work you have duplicate changes.
Is it ok?

Sometimes, clean up bits that aren't ideal
$ git add -i
Add the good parts
$ git checkout . (revert the working tree to the index)
$ make test (did I extract the change correctly?)
$ git commit
Write a good message, sign off, etc
$ git checkout mixed-work
$ git rebase -i submit

... Ah I see, we throw away old commits anyway with rebasing.

Often, resolve easy conflicts where my mixed-work branch introduced bugs
that I fixed later and have now adopted the fixed code

Then I repeat until I don't have any more good changes in mixed-work
(either I have nothing, only debugging cruft, or only stuff I haven't
gotten to work yet). If there's nothing but cruft, I've fully merged the
topic, and I delete the branch.

Eventually, I'm satisfied with what I've cleaned up, and I do:
$ git push origin submit:master

Also, I generally have a bunch of "mixed-work" branches, each containing
different stuff that isn't ready. I'll periodicly go through all of them
and rebase onto "submit" or "origin/master" (or, sometimes, give up on
them and delete them).

(One thing that would be nice to have is a "git apply --interactive" which
applies the user's choice of hunks, like "git add -i" adds them)

I totally agree.

I would appriciate rebase --copy option, which doesn't move, but copy
the changelists like cherry-pick.
Then we could use rebase -i (with edit) instead of apply.

PS
Why after edit in rebase -i the change is already commited? I always
have to reset;add -i

       -Daniel
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