by elischleifer on 11/30/22, 3:42 PM with 44 comments
by scelerat on 11/30/22, 6:00 PM
"But my feature branch gets squashed anyway"
1. I believe that in itself is a mistake, especially as feature branches get large and, though you say you're all for small feature branches, your commit history says you do something different.
2. You don't clean up that giant merge commit message with all those "WIP" "fixed stupid mistake" comments in there.
Use rebase to keep your workspace clean and main/master comprehensible to your colleagues.
by itslennysfault on 11/30/22, 5:44 PM
I've always heard people talk about how it doesn't scale, but I use rebase like 99% of the time, and have worked on projects with hundreds of ICs. This is the first time I've seen someone explain it in a way where I get it. NO I'M NOT FORCE PUSHING TO MAIN YOU SILLY NILLY! Turns out I'm "squash rebasing." I guess I didn't know I need to specify that.
I do it slightly differently tough. I use git commit --amend to build up a single commit as I go.
git checkout -b blah-feature
# do some work
git commit -m "Main description of my feature"
# do more work
# no -m, and then I just add bullet points for each subsequent change in vim (example below)
git commit --amend
# pulls from remote without merging
git fetch origin main
# adds my single commit to the end of the current main
git rebase main
# push up feature branch for code review
git push
# get yelled at about --set-upstream, and copy/paste that command :-)
Add some new feature
- do some sub task
- do another sub task
- ...by dboreham on 11/30/22, 5:18 PM
> Add everything I’m working on (new and edited files).
Bad idea. Extraneous cruft that isn't caught by .gitignore will leak into the repo. Always run git diff and git status first to see what you are about to add.
by gabrielgio on 11/30/22, 6:40 PM
I don't think you will need to reclone if did nothing wrong. You can always use `git reset --hard origin/...`, and if that does not work the you definitely did something wrong.
> But in Linus’s own words, Git is “the information manager from hell.”
That git is not the same git we have today, and it was handed over to another person quite early in the development. Although I agree that git ux is sometimes confusing.
> Limit your Git actions ... for peak Git efficiency
I pretty much disagree, if I can give my two cents, read the manual. Git have some really handy tooling that can help with non-git issue (e.g.: `git bisect`). Limiting your knowledge brings no benefit.
I like some point of the text, but overall I don't like the premise. it exaggerate a lot a problem to prove a point.
by jangofett27 on 11/30/22, 4:57 PM
by alkonaut on 11/30/22, 7:06 PM
Some times they are described as such “merged master into feature” and can be avoided if you review the PR per commit. But more often I want to review the PR as a whole, and then the tool fails to show a good diff of what’s actually developed in the PR. This to me is a much larger problem than the log pollution, which can be solved by squashing.
Other than that (missing the bigger reason for rebase and focusing on a lesser argument in my opinion) I quite agree with the article.
by everybodyknows on 11/30/22, 7:48 PM
> This isn’t grade school, you don’t have to show your work As you become an efficient engineer, the path you took to get to the final state of a pull request becomes far less important — and is academically interesting at best. You shouldn’t have to show your work like you did in school. Land the feature or bug and move on to the next one. The code speaks for itself (alongside some judiciously placed comments).
> Having granular annotations of all your work is unnecessary, ...
This premise underlies the particular workflow that the posted article assumes, and all the described command+option incantations are directed to it.
But there is another, very different git workflow used by a project we've all heard of, and that is the Linux kernel core code. The trunk.io workflow is unsuitable for Linux due to different requirements. Some of which being:
1. Commitment to support for indefinite future.
2. Large, complex feature PRs.
3. Human review of PRs, by maintainers fully empowered to reject.
4. A low-level programming language, in which subtle bugs are easily introduced.
Also different luxuries:
1. Willingness to put off merge of a "hot" new feature indefinitely.
So, kernel PRs are structured as a linear series of numbered patches meeting the requirement that each step along the way compile cleanly. This is primarily to ease the task of the maintainer responsible for the subsystem involved, and who will have deal with the fallout of bugs introduced by the PR. Example:
Credential: I have written code for the Linux kernel core, and it was merged, and it was buggy.
by sossunday on 11/30/22, 4:10 PM
> Push my code to the remote; likely spinning up lots of machines in CI to check my work.
That's a good callout; something that I have noticed I frequently miss when iterating on my code is the cost of the CI/CD systems already set up. It's something to consider especially when iterating using a system like Sapling for Stacked PRs; each individual PR push may update a chain which causes a lot of wasted CI/CD time.
by jbergknoff on 11/30/22, 5:41 PM
This has been my experience as well.
Great article, thanks! I've been using essentially this same subset of commands for many years, and it's worked extremely well for me: does everything I need/my team needs, and avoids complication. I'm glad to have this as a reference I can point people to when they ask for git advice.
by bsima on 11/30/22, 5:50 PM
by surf_wreck21 on 11/30/22, 5:18 PM
by GMoromisato on 11/30/22, 5:47 PM
The irony, IMO, is that Linus prefers C to C++ exactly because C++ gives developers too much rope.
by federicoweber on 11/30/22, 4:45 PM
by LocalPCGuy on 11/30/22, 10:34 PM
That said, every time I try to really teach someone rebase, particularly a new dev, I understand why people shy away from it. I did for a very long time. So I totally understand and get why the above style workflow may terrify folks (or just seem unnecessary). It is easy to mess up and there are a lot of little gotchas if someone isn't careful. And worst of all, it can result in lost work (although even that is "usually" recoverable, but not always). I do think there are some benefits to it, and I think it is something that can be integrated into a dev's workflow a bit at a time. And it really doesn't take significantly more time, in my experience.
I'm not gonna argue here for adopting that. Except for "no commit messages", I'd be pretty ok with a workflow as outlined by this post. I do think folks should understand how rebase works, what commits will be moved/changed when they run a rebase (this is vital), and how to recover when a rebase goes bad (no, not reclone, not generally even delete branch and check it out again).
.
Couple random thoughts I try to communicate to folks who decide to utilize rebase more in their workflow:
- rebase often (if main updates often)
- if worried the rebase may be messy, create a temporary branch prior to starting the rebase at the feature branch HEAD - allows for an easy way back (and prevents lost code)
- don't rebase shared branches - this is a tool to use PRIOR to "sharing" (i.e. pushing) code
- squash/clean up unneeded commits before rebasing on another branch (this may bring it all the way down to a single commit, but for larger features, I think there is value in seeing the main decision points along the way)
- fix conflicts with the code at the specific commit you are on only, don't fix it with the eventual end result X commits down the line - this will generally avoid the dreaded "fix the same conflict over and over for each commit" problem some people encounter with rebasing
- remember rebase creates new history - it doesn't rewrite history (however, old commits will eventually be garbage collected)
- pro tip: understand how `rebase --onto` works, sometimes you shouldn't, or at least don't want to, take all of the commits