Chromium Code Reviews
chromiumcodereview-hr@appspot.gserviceaccount.com (chromiumcodereview-hr) | Please choose your nickname with Settings | Help | Chromium Project | Gerrit Changes | Sign out
(16)

Side by Side Diff: README.git-cl.md

Issue 2232303002: Overhaul the README files a bit. (Closed) Base URL: svn://svn.chromium.org/chrome/trunk/tools/depot_tools
Patch Set: Use better example Created 4 years, 4 months ago
Use n/p to move between diff chunks; N/P to move between comments. Draft comments are only viewable by you.
Jump to:
View unified diff | Download patch | Annotate | Revision Log
« README.gclient.md ('K') | « README.gclient.md ('k') | no next file » | no next file with comments »
Toggle Intra-line Diffs ('i') | Expand Comments ('e') | Collapse Comments ('c') | Show Comments Hide Comments ('s')
OLDNEW
(Empty)
1 # git-cl
2
3 The git-cl README describes the git-cl command set. This document describes how
4 code review and git work together in general, intended for people familiar with
5 git but unfamiliar with the code review process supported by Rietveld and
6 Gerrit.
7
8
9 ## Reitveld concepts and terms
10
11 A Rietveld review is for discussion of a single change or patch. You upload a
12 proposed change, the reviewer comments on your change, and then you can upload a
13 revised version of your change. Rietveld stores the history of uploaded patches
14 as well as the comments, and can compute diffs in between these patches. The
15 history of a patch is very much like a small branch in git, but since Rietveld
16 is VCS-agnostic the concepts don't map perfectly. The identifier for a single
17 review+patches+comments in Rietveld is called an `issue`.
18
19 Rietveld provides a basic uploader that understands git. This program is used by
20 git-cl, and is included in the git-cl repo as upload.py.
21
22
23 ## Basic interaction with git
24
25 The fundamental problem you encounter when you try to mix git and code review is
26 that with git it's nice to commit code locally, while during a code review
27 you're often requested to change something about your code. There are a few
28 different ways you can handle this workflow with git:
29
30 1. Rewriting a single commit. Say the origin commit is O, and you commit your
31 initial work in a commit A, making your history like O--A. After review
32 comments, you commit --amend, effectively erasing A and making a new commit
33 A', so history is now O--A'. (Equivalently, you can use git reset --soft or
34 git rebase -i.)
35 2. Writing follow-up commits. Initial work is again in A, and after review
36 comments, you write a new commit B so your history looks like O--A--B. When
37 you upload the revised patch, you upload the diff of O..B, not A..B; you
38 always upload the full diff of what you're proposing to change.
39
40 The Rietveld patch uploader just takes arguments to `git diff`, so either of the
41 above workflows work fine. If all you want to do is upload a patch, you can use
42 the upload.py provided by Rietveld with arguments like this:
43
44 upload.py --server server.com <args to "git diff">
45
46 The first time you upload, it creates a new issue; for follow-ups on the same
47 issue, you need to provide the issue number:
48
49 upload.py --server server.com --issue 1234 <args to "git diff">
50
51
52 ## git-cl to the rescue
53
54 git-cl simplifies the above in the following ways:
55
56 1. `git cl config` puts a persistent --server setting in your .git/config.
57 2. The first time you upload an issue, the issue number is associated with the
58 current *branch*. If you upload again, it will upload on the same issue.
59 (Note that this association is tied to a branch, not a commit, which means
60 you need a separate branch per review.)
61 3. If your branch is _tracking_ (in the `git checkout --track` sense) another
62 one (like origin/master), calls to `git cl upload` will diff against that
63 branch by default. (You can still pass arguments to `git diff` on the
64 command line, if necessary.)
65
66 In the common case, this means that calling simply `git cl upload` will always
67 upload the correct diff to the correct place.
68
69
70 ## Patch series
71
72 The above is all you need to know for working on a single patch.
73
74 Things get much more complicated when you have a series of commits that you want
75 to get reviewed. Say your history looks like O--A--B--C. If you want to upload
76 that as a single review, everything works just as above.
77
78 But what if you upload each of A, B, and C as separate reviews? What if you
79 then need to change A?
80
81 1. One option is rewriting history: write a new commit A', then use git rebase
82 -i to insert that diff in as O--A--A'--B--C as well as squash it. This is
83 sometimes not possible if B and C have touched some lines affected by A'.
84 2. Another option, and the one espoused by software like topgit, is for you to
85 have separate branches for A, B, and C, and after writing A' you merge it
86 into each of those branches. (topgit automates this merging process.) This
87 is also what is recommended by git-cl, which likes having different branch
88 identifiers to hang the issue number off of. Your history ends up looking
89 like:
90
91 O---A---B---C
92 \ \ \
93 A'--B'--C'
94
95 Which is ugly, but it accurately tracks the real history of your work, can be
96 thrown away at the end by committing A+A' as a single `squash` commit.
97
98 In practice, this comes up pretty rarely. Suggestions for better workflows are
99 welcome.
OLDNEW
« README.gclient.md ('K') | « README.gclient.md ('k') | no next file » | no next file with comments »

Powered by Google App Engine
This is Rietveld 408576698