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For example, correctly merging a finished feature branch requires up to 15 individual Git commands! Am I missing something? Does `git merge` imply fourteen oth

by btym 9y ago

For example, correctly merging a finished feature branch requires up to 15 individual Git commands! Am I missing something? Does `git merge` imply fourteen other commands?

stinos 9y ago
Maybe they include things like stashing/popping current uncomitted changes, switching to target branch, pulling source and target branches first, rebasing feature branch onto latest target branch, resolving conflicts, ... ? All of these are things I has to do at one point or another to 'just' merge some feature branch from somebody else into master while I was working on another branch myself. So if they combine all of that in one command including taking care of everything which can go wrong I can imagine getting 15 commands.
- falcolas 9y ago
  > So if they combine all of that in one command including taking care of everything which can go wrong I can imagine getting 15 commands. My concern would be: what happens when the automation encounters and edge case; what kind of unholy mess would you end up with? And to be fair, with GitHub and GitLab, doing local feature branch merges has become a very rare event for me in the last 5 years.
  - kevingoslar 9y ago
    Git Town covers a ton of edge cases. Just look at their "features" folder. If something goes wrong, Git Town allows to cleanly abort and undo what it did so far and go back to where it started. That's a lot safer than the unholy mess that ensues when most people try to run "git reset --hard" or "git push --force" manually.
    - Jare 9y ago
      Edge cases handled properly may be the killer feature of this project, at least for me. With git, as long as I'm in familiar territory it's fine, but when somethings goes off rails my head's working set explodes with options.
blauditore 9y ago
Not sure what they're referring to, maybe resolving conficts (`git merge --continue` and such). But at least you may want to delete the topic branch afterwards, locally and on remote.
jrgv 9y ago
The "15" is a link to a test case which shows the 15 commands. It's a contrived scenario in my opinion: it assumes that you want to merge a feature branch into the main branch while you're in the middle of working on some other, unrelated feature and have uncommited changes in your working directory.
- girvo 9y ago
  Hardly a contrived scenario; I run into situations exactly like that at least once a week...
  - aristidb 9y ago
    You could just make a new clean checkout in a different directory?
    - weaksauce 9y ago
      You could. I work with Firefox and that code base is huge so it's not a good idea to download 15+ gigs every time you don't know how to do something. Learning the tools is a more sustainable way to go.
      - palunon 9y ago
        Make an external worktree. No need to re-clone the whole repo, nor stashing/commiting your work, switching branch, doing the merge, etc (which you may know how to do, but is a pain if you often need to do so) https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree
        weaksauce 9y ago
        That's a neat command... it's also relatively new to git. I hadn't heard about it before... thanks!
    - girvo 9y ago
      This is what I often do, however with larger repositories (where people have a bad habit of committing files that they probably shouldn't be, blowing out the size of the repo significantly), this can also be slow! But of course, this all comes down to your specific circumstances. Mine were exacerbated by the fact that the bulk of the team didn't really understand git very well, and bouncing between features at a super rapid pace meant I could get into some slightly odd situations. Nothing a bit of git-fu can't fix normally, but can take a little bit of wrangling or forethought.

by btym 9y ago

For example, correctly merging a finished feature branch requires up to 15 individual Git commands! Am I missing something? Does `git merge` imply fourteen other commands?

stinos 9y ago

Maybe they include things like stashing/popping current uncomitted changes, switching to target branch, pulling source and target branches first, rebasing feature branch onto latest target branch, resolving conflicts, ... ? All of these are things I has to do at one point or another to 'just' merge some feature branch from somebody else into master while I was working on another branch myself. So if they combine all of that in one command including taking care of everything which can go wrong I can imagine getting 15 commands.

falcolas 9y ago
> So if they combine all of that in one command including taking care of everything which can go wrong I can imagine getting 15 commands. My concern would be: what happens when the automation encounters and edge case; what kind of unholy mess would you end up with? And to be fair, with GitHub and GitLab, doing local feature branch merges has become a very rare event for me in the last 5 years.
- kevingoslar 9y ago
  Git Town covers a ton of edge cases. Just look at their "features" folder. If something goes wrong, Git Town allows to cleanly abort and undo what it did so far and go back to where it started. That's a lot safer than the unholy mess that ensues when most people try to run "git reset --hard" or "git push --force" manually.
  - Jare 9y ago
    Edge cases handled properly may be the killer feature of this project, at least for me. With git, as long as I'm in familiar territory it's fine, but when somethings goes off rails my head's working set explodes with options.

blauditore 9y ago

Not sure what they're referring to, maybe resolving conficts (`git merge --continue` and such). But at least you may want to delete the topic branch afterwards, locally and on remote.

jrgv 9y ago

The "15" is a link to a test case which shows the 15 commands. It's a contrived scenario in my opinion: it assumes that you want to merge a feature branch into the main branch while you're in the middle of working on some other, unrelated feature and have uncommited changes in your working directory.

girvo 9y ago
Hardly a contrived scenario; I run into situations exactly like that at least once a week...
- aristidb 9y ago
  You could just make a new clean checkout in a different directory?
  - weaksauce 9y ago
    You could. I work with Firefox and that code base is huge so it's not a good idea to download 15+ gigs every time you don't know how to do something. Learning the tools is a more sustainable way to go.
    - palunon 9y ago
      Make an external worktree. No need to re-clone the whole repo, nor stashing/commiting your work, switching branch, doing the merge, etc (which you may know how to do, but is a pain if you often need to do so) https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree
      - weaksauce 9y ago
        That's a neat command... it's also relatively new to git. I hadn't heard about it before... thanks!
  - girvo 9y ago
    This is what I often do, however with larger repositories (where people have a bad habit of committing files that they probably shouldn't be, blowing out the size of the repo significantly), this can also be slow! But of course, this all comes down to your specific circumstances. Mine were exacerbated by the fact that the bulk of the team didn't really understand git very well, and bouncing between features at a super rapid pace meant I could get into some slightly odd situations. Nothing a bit of git-fu can't fix normally, but can take a little bit of wrangling or forethought.