Git is a free, mature and actively maintained open source project originally developed in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, the famous creator of the Linux operating system kernel, designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. A staggering number of software projects rely on Git for version control, including commercial projects as well as open source. Developers who have worked with Git are well represented in the pool of available software development talent and it works well on a wide range of operating systems and IDEs (Integrated Development Environments).
The following is an example of the type of scenario in which a feature branching workflow is used.
Janne begins a new feature
Before she starts developing a feature, Janne needs an isolated branch to work on. She can request a new branch with the following command:
This checks out a branch called jannes-feature based on master,and the -b flag tells Git to create the branch if it doesn’t already exist. On this branch, Janne edits, stages, and commits changes in the usual fashion, building up her feature with as many commits as necessary:
Janne has a break
janne adds a few commits to her feature over the course of the morning. Before she leaves for lunch, it’s a good idea to push her feature branch up to the central repository. This serves as a convenient backup, but if Janne was collaborating with other developers, this would also give them access to her initial commits.
This command pushes jannes-feature to the central repository (origin), and the -u flag adds it as a remote tracking branch. After setting up the tracking branch, Janne can call git push without any parameters to push her feature.
Janne finishes her feature
When Janne gets back from lunch, she completes her feature. Before merging it into master, she needs to file a pull request letting the rest of the team know she's done. But first, she should make sure the central repository has her most recent commits:
Then, she files the pull request in her Git GUI asking to merge jannes-feature into master, and team members will be notified automatically. The great thing about pull requests is that they show comments right next to their related commits, so it's easy to ask questions about specific changesets.
Jack receives the pull request
Jack gets the pull request and takes a look at jannes-feature. He decides he wants to make a few changes before integrating it into the official project, and he and Janne have some back-and-forth via the pull request.
Janne makes the changes
To make the changes, Janne uses the exact same process as she did to create the first iteration of her feature. She edits, stages, commits, and pushes updates to the central repository. All her activity shows up in the pull request, and Jack can still make comments along the way.
If he wanted, Jack could pull jannes-feature into his local repository and work on it on his own. Any commits he added would also show up in the pull request.
Janne publishes her feature
Once Jack is ready to accept the pull request, someone needs to merge the feature into the stable project (this can be done by either Jack or Janne):
This process often results in a merge commit. Some developers like this because it’s like a symbolic joining of the feature with the rest of the code base. But, if you’re partial to a linear history, it’s possible to rebase the feature onto the tip of master before executing the merge, resulting in a fast-forward merge.
Some GUI’s will automate the pull request acceptance process by running all of these commands just by clicking an “Accept” button. If yours doesn’t, it should at least be able to automatically close the pull request when the feature branch gets merged into master.
Meanwhile, John is doing the exact same thing
While Mary and Jack are working on jannes-feature and discussing it in her pull request, John is doing the exact same thing with his own feature branch. By isolating features into separate branches, everybody can work independently, yet it’s still trivial to share changes with other developers when necessary.
git
init - Initializing a new repository
clone - Cloning an existing repository
commit - Saving changes to the repository
pull - Will download all the changes from the point where the local and master diverged
push - Push commits made on your local branch to a remote repository
add - Add file contents to the index
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