Git
This document describes how to use git for Alpine Linux development and to submit new packages that you've created. If you just want to browse the Alpine Developer repositories, please visit git.alpinelinux.org. If you are new to git and need quick reference, check Git Basics and also refer further reading section.
General GIT Workflow
- Configure your git
- Clone the alpine Git repository
- Make your file edits in your local checkout of the local copy of repository.
- Ensure that your commits meets the Quality assurance
- Commit the changes in your local repository:
git commit
- Bring the rest of your local repository up to date:
git pull --rebase
- Check what you are going to push:
git log origin..master
- If you have write access Move your changes up to the master
git push
- If you do not have write access, you can submit patches .
Configure your global git config
First you need to tell your name and email to git. This name and email will show up in all your commits.
git config --global user.name "Your Name Comes Here" git config --global user.email you@yourdomain.example.com
Using git config without --global let you configure other details for a specific git repository.
git config --global color.ui true git config --global core.pager more
git config --global http.proxy http://proxy_ip:proxy_port
Cloning a repository via Git
There are two ways to work with the Alpine git repository...
Without write access
If you want to clone the Alpine aports repository, switch to the directory you want to have the aports/ directory in and launch git.
git clone git://git.alpinelinux.org/aports.git
git clone https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports
If you want only the last 3 revisions:
git clone git://git.alpinelinux.org/aports.git --depth 3
Use the command below to see the full log of the trunk.
git log
With write access
If you have write access to the Alpine repository, the URL needs to be adjusted for cloning a repository
git clone git@git.alpinelinux.org:aports
Alternatively you can set the remote url of an exisiting git clone:
git remote set-url origin git@git.alpinelinux.org:aports
Quality assurance
Before pushing anything to it is good to make sure that:
- The package actually builds
- Commit message is good
- pkgrel is bumped if needed
- no whitespace damage (last chars of a line is whitespace)
The following git hook will help you catch some common errors early:
#!/bin/sh # Redirect output to stderr. exec 1>&2 git diff --cached --name-only HEAD | grep 'APKBUILD$' | while read f; do olddir=$PWD cd ${f%/APKBUILD} if ! abuild sanitycheck && verify; then exit 1 fi cd "$olddir" done # If there are whitespace errors, print the offending file names and fail. exec git diff-index --check --cached HEAD --
Install it as .git/hooks/pre-commit and make it executable.
Submitting Patches
New aports should normally go into testing repository. After a reasonable testing period if the package is complete (e.g. it has an init script, it has a working and sane default configuration, etc.) and it has a maintainer it can be moved into community repository. Main repository is for packages that are either core of the linux system or are dependencies of other core packages. A package in main cannot have a dependency in community or testing and a package in community cannot have a dependency on packages in testing.
There are currently two ways to contribute to propose changes, via Gitlab and via the mailing list.
Submitting patches via Gitlab
Setup
To submit patches on Alpine Linux' Gitlab instance you first have to create an account for it here. It's recommended to set a SSH key now, refer to the Gitlab docs for how to do that.
Creating a merge request
Now that you're all setup you have to fork the repository you want to contribute to, for example if you want to open a merge request for aports you would have to fork alpine/aports, see the Gitlab docs if you're having problems with that. Other repositories belonging to Alpine Linux live in the Alpine organisation. If you already have an old fork, first clone it and then update it as shown below.
After forking you can clone the repository like so:
git clone git@gitlab.alpinelinux.org:$USER/$REPO.git
Replace $USER with the nickname of your Gitlab account and $REPO with the repository you want to work on. Now you can change to another branch (e.g. the name of the package you want to edit) with:
(If necessary, update an old fork first, see rebasing, below)
git checkout -b pkgname
Do your changes now and then push with:
git push -u origin $branchname
Gitlab will print an URL to create a merge request in your terminal.
Amending changes to a merge request
If reviewers requested changes or if you noticed that something should be changed about your merge request's change you can simply amend your changes to the right commit and force push. So if you want to change the commit at the tip of your branch you can simply do:
git commit --amend
If you want to change a commit that's not at the tip of your branch you can do:
git commit --fixup $SHA1_OF_COMMIT_YOU_WANT_TO_FIX
Afterwards you have to force-push in order to update your merge request:
git push -f origin
Rebasing against Alpine Linux's master
It's best to always stay up-to-date with the state of the upstream Alpine Linux repository to ensure that no merge conflicts happen later on. To do that you first have to add a new git remote which points to the upstream repository (instead of your fork):
git remote add upstream https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/$REPO
Now you can fetch all changes with:
git fetch --all
And then you can rebase with:
git rebase
Submitting patches via the mailing list
![](/images/d/d8/Tango-dialog-warning.png)
Patches should be created with git and submitted to alpine-aports mailing list with git send-email (which needs the git-email Alpine package).
Only the last commit with 'git send-email'
To submit the last commit as a patch to alpine-aports mailing list:
git send-email --to alpine-aports@lists.alpinelinux.org -1
git config sendemail.to alpine-aports@lists.alpinelinux.org
The first line in commit message will be subject and the long description (separated with empty line) will be the body in the email. The example below shows
testing/packagename: new aport <- header https://example.com/packagename <- body wonderful package
See Development using git#Email_configuration on how configure SMTP Auth.
Multiple commits with 'git send-email'
If you have many commits you can create a directory with patches and send them with git send-email.
rm -Rf patches mkdir patches git format-patch -o patches origin git send-email patches --compose --no-chain-reply-to --to alpine-aports@lists.alpinelinux.org
You can also format patches for the last x number of commits with:
git format-patch -x -o patches
This will produce the patches for each local commit in the directory "patches" and send them. Use --no-chain-reply-to to avoid that each patch is sent as a reply to the previous patch.
Eg.
- [PATCH 0/m]
- [PATCH 1/m]
- [PATCH 2/m]
- ...
- [PATCH 2/m]
- [PATCH 1/m]
With the option --no-chain-reply-to the patches will be sent as a reply to the first email, the cover letter (the [PATCH 0/m]) and will make the email thread nicer. Like this:
- [PATCH 0/m]
- [PATCH 1/m]
- [PATCH 2/m]
- ..
Resend an updated patch
Sometimes patches are rejected due to minor issues in the patch. Do not send an incremental patch on top of your initial, bad, patch. Instead, recreate the patch and send a new, fixed version of your patch. (use git commit --amend to edit a local commit).
When you sending a second version of the patch use --subject-prefix "PATCH v2" to indicate that this is a new version of a previously sent patch. You may also use --in-reply-to <message-id> where <message-id> the the id of email requesting the resend.
You should also write a note on the what was changed. Use --annotate for this and write the comment under the three dashes "---" so the note is not included in the commit message. For example:
... Subject: [PATCH v2] testing/mypackage: new aport https://example.com Example package --- Changes v1 -> v2: - removed depends - added zlib-dev to makedepends testing/mypackage/APKBUILD | 41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 41 insertions(+) create mode 100644 testing/mypackage/APKBUILD ...
Note that the notes that are below the "---" will not be included in the commit message.
Git Basics
Stashing
git stash
if you want to "hide" your changes. Do this if you think there may be other commits against the same things you are working on and want to refresh your local checkout (using a git pull --rebase) from the master. Use git stash apply to get your stash back.
Reset your local repository
git checkout -f master
if you think your tree is pretty hopeless, need a kill-and-fill to bring the master into your local repository. You will lose local changes.
List the local branch
You can now list your local branch by doing
git branch
which should ouput
* master
List your local non committed changes
git status
Commit
Now you can start to work on your tree. As soon as you feel you have reached a step in development where you can commit your work locally, use
git commit -a
or
git commit <specific files>
or
git add <specific files> git commit
If you wish to give credit to someone else's work (e.g. you are applying a third party patch):
git commit <specific files> --author "Name Surname <user@example.com>
The format of the commit message should be:
One-line description that's less than 72 chars long <second line empty> Optional longer description with explanation why changes were made. Links to relevant issues in Bugtracker can be done with: ref #<issuenumber> It is also possible to resolve issues with: fixes #<issuenumber>
Think of first line as the subject in an email and the third line and on as the body of the email, describing what the commit does. You don't need the long description but the first line, the short description should be there as it will be showed in the commit log.
autocmd FileType gitcommit set textwidth=72
List your commits
git log
Keeping your local working branch in sync
Pull the changes from upstream (git.alpinelinux.org)
git pull --rebase
Run the command:
git config branch.origin.rebase true
Next time you do 'git pull' you are actually doing a 'git pull --rebase'.Git Tag
Create an annotated tag and push it.
git tag -a tagname -m 'commit message (e.g release 1.x)' git push && git push --tags
Create a new project
Create your own directory that you want to become your new acf-mystuff project.
mkdir acf-mystuff cd acf-mystuff git init
Create your files and add/commit them to your git-project
git add ./ git commit
Other Related articles
Further reading
- Git Tutorial
- Git - SVN Crash Course (quickstart if you know svn)
- A tour of git: the basics Recommended
- The Git Community Book
- Git From the Bottom Up
- Very good Git guide