Development using git:Developer repositories

Some git repositories of Alpine developer are hosted at git.alpinelinux.org. Developers who has no push access to the offical aports repo can has a developer aports repo that can be used as a staging area. Developers with push access, integration managers, can review and pull from this or can choose to reject if the changes needs more fixing.

The git repos are to be used when there are many changes (more than 3) that need no or very little review. If comments are requested or if there are doubts, then its better to use git send-email. It might also be better to use git send-email for single commits.

Git Push (Distributed Workflows)

When working with Distributed Workflows you would 'pull' from public repository, 'push' to another publically accessible repository (where you have write access), main developeres or integration managers who have write access to public repository, 'pulls' you changes from your public accessed repository into the blessed official public repository.

To make it easier for you to work, you can configure 'git push' to push your work to your public developer repository ('git pull' would still pull from the blessed/official repository as you cloned from).

cd /your/private/repo/where/you/work/reponame git config remote.origin.pushurl "ssh://user@dev.alpinelinux.org/home/user/cgit/reponame.git"

Now 'git pull' pulls the official, blessed, repository and 'git push' pushes to your public developer repository.

Note: The path where you want to push to should first be prepared with

git clone --bare ...

as described below in section 'Upload the new project'

Requesting a pull from developer repo to official

Before asking for merging the developer repo into the official make sure that:

1. All modified packages builds
2. The commit history looks nice. You can use the cgit interface for this. It is a goal that it should be easy to revert single commits in case problems should appear in future so avoid changing multiple packages with single commits.

Before asking for a pull, rebase your public repo with the official repo. This is done with:

git pull --rebase git push

If there have been changes in official repo that conflicts with your work, then you have to resolve those conflicts. And maybe redo or drop some of your commits.

You can ask directly on IRC #alpine-devel or by sending an email to alpine-devel mailing list. Please include the git url (eg. git://git.alpinelinux.org/user/aports.git) that can easily be copied and pasted and please also mention why the merge is needed. This explanation is meant to be copied and pasted in the merge commit unless the pull is a fast-forward.

Example request on IRC:

please git pull git://git.alpinelinux.org/ncopa/aports
It includes a new python application pyfoo with all its dependencies.

Example email:

Subject: please git pull git://git.alpinelinux.org/ncopa/aports

The libfoo was upgraded to 2.0. This upgrade breaks ABI so all packages linking
to libfoo was rebuilt. The rebuilt packages was:
- libbar
- bazapp
- bar-utils

Dealing with pull rejects

If the pull was rejected for some reason or you need change things, then you can do an interactive reabase.

git rebase --interactive

This will let you go thru all you commits inteactively, fix up commits and/or commit messages (aka --ammend), merge commits etc. It might be the integration manager will see what you are trying to fix and just fix it there and then. In that case you might need drop your own commit. This can also be done with git rebase.

When the needed changes have been done you again push to your public developer repo (and as always you git pull --rebase before pushing), but since the history have changed due to the rebase git might give you an error message when pushing. As long no-one else have cloned/pulled your repo, it should safe to use --force option.

git push --force

Note that this will overwrite the changes and history on your public repo so make sure that your local work clone has all the commits that should be there. (use git log to verify).

This also means that only the integration managers should pull from the developers repo. All other developers should pull from the blessed repository. (In theory multiple developers can work on a bigger subproject but then one of the developers should work as a lieutenant in the dictator and lieutenants workflow.)