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736 <div id="header">
737 <h1>
738 gitworkflows(7) Manual Page
739 </h1>
740 <h2>NAME</h2>
741 <div class="sectionbody">
742 <p>gitworkflows -
743 An overview of recommended workflows with Git
744 </p>
745 </div>
746 </div>
747 <div id="content">
748 <div class="sect1">
749 <h2 id="_synopsis">SYNOPSIS</h2>
750 <div class="sectionbody">
751 <div class="verseblock">
752 <pre class="content">git *</pre>
753 <div class="attribution">
754 </div></div>
755 </div>
756 </div>
757 <div class="sect1">
758 <h2 id="_description">DESCRIPTION</h2>
759 <div class="sectionbody">
760 <div class="paragraph"><p>This document attempts to write down and motivate some of the workflow
761 elements used for <code>git.git</code> itself. Many ideas apply in general,
762 though the full workflow is rarely required for smaller projects with
763 fewer people involved.</p></div>
764 <div class="paragraph"><p>We formulate a set of <em>rules</em> for quick reference, while the prose
765 tries to motivate each of them. Do not always take them literally;
766 you should value good reasons for your actions higher than manpages
767 such as this one.</p></div>
768 </div>
769 </div>
770 <div class="sect1">
771 <h2 id="_separate_changes">SEPARATE CHANGES</h2>
772 <div class="sectionbody">
773 <div class="paragraph"><p>As a general rule, you should try to split your changes into small
774 logical steps, and commit each of them. They should be consistent,
775 working independently of any later commits, pass the test suite, etc.
776 This makes the review process much easier, and the history much more
777 useful for later inspection and analysis, for example with
778 <a href="git-blame.html">git-blame(1)</a> and <a href="git-bisect.html">git-bisect(1)</a>.</p></div>
779 <div class="paragraph"><p>To achieve this, try to split your work into small steps from the very
780 beginning. It is always easier to squash a few commits together than
781 to split one big commit into several. Don&#8217;t be afraid of making too
782 small or imperfect steps along the way. You can always go back later
783 and edit the commits with <code>git rebase --interactive</code> before you
784 publish them. You can use <code>git stash push --keep-index</code> to run the
785 test suite independent of other uncommitted changes; see the EXAMPLES
786 section of <a href="git-stash.html">git-stash(1)</a>.</p></div>
787 </div>
788 </div>
789 <div class="sect1">
790 <h2 id="_managing_branches">MANAGING BRANCHES</h2>
791 <div class="sectionbody">
792 <div class="paragraph"><p>There are two main tools that can be used to include changes from one
793 branch on another: <a href="git-merge.html">git-merge(1)</a> and
794 <a href="git-cherry-pick.html">git-cherry-pick(1)</a>.</p></div>
795 <div class="paragraph"><p>Merges have many advantages, so we try to solve as many problems as
796 possible with merges alone. Cherry-picking is still occasionally
797 useful; see "Merging upwards" below for an example.</p></div>
798 <div class="paragraph"><p>Most importantly, merging works at the branch level, while
799 cherry-picking works at the commit level. This means that a merge can
800 carry over the changes from 1, 10, or 1000 commits with equal ease,
801 which in turn means the workflow scales much better to a large number
802 of contributors (and contributions). Merges are also easier to
803 understand because a merge commit is a "promise" that all changes from
804 all its parents are now included.</p></div>
805 <div class="paragraph"><p>There is a tradeoff of course: merges require a more careful branch
806 management. The following subsections discuss the important points.</p></div>
807 <div class="sect2">
808 <h3 id="_graduation">Graduation</h3>
809 <div class="paragraph"><p>As a given feature goes from experimental to stable, it also
810 "graduates" between the corresponding branches of the software.
811 <code>git.git</code> uses the following <em>integration branches</em>:</p></div>
812 <div class="ulist"><ul>
813 <li>
815 <em>maint</em> tracks the commits that should go into the next "maintenance
816 release", i.e., update of the last released stable version;
817 </p>
818 </li>
819 <li>
821 <em>master</em> tracks the commits that should go into the next release;
822 </p>
823 </li>
824 <li>
826 <em>next</em> is intended as a testing branch for topics being tested for
827 stability for master.
828 </p>
829 </li>
830 </ul></div>
831 <div class="paragraph"><p>There is a fourth official branch that is used slightly differently:</p></div>
832 <div class="ulist"><ul>
833 <li>
835 <em>seen</em> (patches seen by the maintainer) is an integration branch for
836 things that are not quite ready for inclusion yet (see "Integration
837 Branches" below).
838 </p>
839 </li>
840 </ul></div>
841 <div class="paragraph"><p>Each of the four branches is usually a direct descendant of the one
842 above it.</p></div>
843 <div class="paragraph"><p>Conceptually, the feature enters at an unstable branch (usually <em>next</em>
844 or <em>seen</em>), and "graduates" to <em>master</em> for the next release once it is
845 considered stable enough.</p></div>
846 </div>
847 <div class="sect2">
848 <h3 id="_merging_upwards">Merging upwards</h3>
849 <div class="paragraph"><p>The "downwards graduation" discussed above cannot be done by actually
850 merging downwards, however, since that would merge <em>all</em> changes on
851 the unstable branch into the stable one. Hence the following:</p></div>
852 <div class="exampleblock">
853 <div class="title">Rule: Merge upwards</div>
854 <div class="content">
855 <div class="paragraph"><p>Always commit your fixes to the oldest supported branch that requires
856 them. Then (periodically) merge the integration branches upwards into each
857 other.</p></div>
858 </div></div>
859 <div class="paragraph"><p>This gives a very controlled flow of fixes. If you notice that you
860 have applied a fix to e.g. <em>master</em> that is also required in <em>maint</em>,
861 you will need to cherry-pick it (using <a href="git-cherry-pick.html">git-cherry-pick(1)</a>)
862 downwards. This will happen a few times and is nothing to worry about
863 unless you do it very frequently.</p></div>
864 </div>
865 <div class="sect2">
866 <h3 id="_topic_branches">Topic branches</h3>
867 <div class="paragraph"><p>Any nontrivial feature will require several patches to implement, and
868 may get extra bugfixes or improvements during its lifetime.</p></div>
869 <div class="paragraph"><p>Committing everything directly on the integration branches leads to many
870 problems: Bad commits cannot be undone, so they must be reverted one
871 by one, which creates confusing histories and further error potential
872 when you forget to revert part of a group of changes. Working in
873 parallel mixes up the changes, creating further confusion.</p></div>
874 <div class="paragraph"><p>Use of "topic branches" solves these problems. The name is pretty
875 self explanatory, with a caveat that comes from the "merge upwards"
876 rule above:</p></div>
877 <div class="exampleblock">
878 <div class="title">Rule: Topic branches</div>
879 <div class="content">
880 <div class="paragraph"><p>Make a side branch for every topic (feature, bugfix, &#8230;). Fork it off
881 at the oldest integration branch that you will eventually want to merge it
882 into.</p></div>
883 </div></div>
884 <div class="paragraph"><p>Many things can then be done very naturally:</p></div>
885 <div class="ulist"><ul>
886 <li>
888 To get the feature/bugfix into an integration branch, simply merge
889 it. If the topic has evolved further in the meantime, merge again.
890 (Note that you do not necessarily have to merge it to the oldest
891 integration branch first. For example, you can first merge a bugfix
892 to <em>next</em>, give it some testing time, and merge to <em>maint</em> when you
893 know it is stable.)
894 </p>
895 </li>
896 <li>
898 If you find you need new features from the branch <em>other</em> to continue
899 working on your topic, merge <em>other</em> to <em>topic</em>. (However, do not
900 do this "just habitually", see below.)
901 </p>
902 </li>
903 <li>
905 If you find you forked off the wrong branch and want to move it
906 "back in time", use <a href="git-rebase.html">git-rebase(1)</a>.
907 </p>
908 </li>
909 </ul></div>
910 <div class="paragraph"><p>Note that the last point clashes with the other two: a topic that has
911 been merged elsewhere should not be rebased. See the section on
912 RECOVERING FROM UPSTREAM REBASE in <a href="git-rebase.html">git-rebase(1)</a>.</p></div>
913 <div class="paragraph"><p>We should point out that "habitually" (regularly for no real reason)
914 merging an integration branch into your topics&#8201;&#8212;&#8201;and by extension,
915 merging anything upstream into anything downstream on a regular basis&#8201;&#8212;&#8201;is frowned upon:</p></div>
916 <div class="exampleblock">
917 <div class="title">Rule: Merge to downstream only at well-defined points</div>
918 <div class="content">
919 <div class="paragraph"><p>Do not merge to downstream except with a good reason: upstream API
920 changes affect your branch; your branch no longer merges to upstream
921 cleanly; etc.</p></div>
922 </div></div>
923 <div class="paragraph"><p>Otherwise, the topic that was merged to suddenly contains more than a
924 single (well-separated) change. The many resulting small merges will
925 greatly clutter up history. Anyone who later investigates the history
926 of a file will have to find out whether that merge affected the topic
927 in development. An upstream might even inadvertently be merged into a
928 "more stable" branch. And so on.</p></div>
929 </div>
930 <div class="sect2">
931 <h3 id="_throw_away_integration">Throw-away integration</h3>
932 <div class="paragraph"><p>If you followed the last paragraph, you will now have many small topic
933 branches, and occasionally wonder how they interact. Perhaps the
934 result of merging them does not even work? But on the other hand, we
935 want to avoid merging them anywhere "stable" because such merges
936 cannot easily be undone.</p></div>
937 <div class="paragraph"><p>The solution, of course, is to make a merge that we can undo: merge
938 into a throw-away branch.</p></div>
939 <div class="exampleblock">
940 <div class="title">Rule: Throw-away integration branches</div>
941 <div class="content">
942 <div class="paragraph"><p>To test the interaction of several topics, merge them into a
943 throw-away branch. You must never base any work on such a branch!</p></div>
944 </div></div>
945 <div class="paragraph"><p>If you make it (very) clear that this branch is going to be deleted
946 right after the testing, you can even publish this branch, for example
947 to give the testers a chance to work with it, or other developers a
948 chance to see if their in-progress work will be compatible. <code>git.git</code>
949 has such an official throw-away integration branch called <em>seen</em>.</p></div>
950 </div>
951 <div class="sect2">
952 <h3 id="_branch_management_for_a_release">Branch management for a release</h3>
953 <div class="paragraph"><p>Assuming you are using the merge approach discussed above, when you
954 are releasing your project you will need to do some additional branch
955 management work.</p></div>
956 <div class="paragraph"><p>A feature release is created from the <em>master</em> branch, since <em>master</em>
957 tracks the commits that should go into the next feature release.</p></div>
958 <div class="paragraph"><p>The <em>master</em> branch is supposed to be a superset of <em>maint</em>. If this
959 condition does not hold, then <em>maint</em> contains some commits that
960 are not included on <em>master</em>. The fixes represented by those commits
961 will therefore not be included in your feature release.</p></div>
962 <div class="paragraph"><p>To verify that <em>master</em> is indeed a superset of <em>maint</em>, use git log:</p></div>
963 <div class="exampleblock">
964 <div class="title">Recipe: Verify <em>master</em> is a superset of <em>maint</em></div>
965 <div class="content">
966 <div class="paragraph"><p><code>git log master..maint</code></p></div>
967 </div></div>
968 <div class="paragraph"><p>This command should not list any commits. Otherwise, check out
969 <em>master</em> and merge <em>maint</em> into it.</p></div>
970 <div class="paragraph"><p>Now you can proceed with the creation of the feature release. Apply a
971 tag to the tip of <em>master</em> indicating the release version:</p></div>
972 <div class="exampleblock">
973 <div class="title">Recipe: Release tagging</div>
974 <div class="content">
975 <div class="paragraph"><p><code>git tag -s -m "Git X.Y.Z" vX.Y.Z master</code></p></div>
976 </div></div>
977 <div class="paragraph"><p>You need to push the new tag to a public Git server (see
978 "DISTRIBUTED WORKFLOWS" below). This makes the tag available to
979 others tracking your project. The push could also trigger a
980 post-update hook to perform release-related items such as building
981 release tarballs and preformatted documentation pages.</p></div>
982 <div class="paragraph"><p>Similarly, for a maintenance release, <em>maint</em> is tracking the commits
983 to be released. Therefore, in the steps above simply tag and push
984 <em>maint</em> rather than <em>master</em>.</p></div>
985 </div>
986 <div class="sect2">
987 <h3 id="_maintenance_branch_management_after_a_feature_release">Maintenance branch management after a feature release</h3>
988 <div class="paragraph"><p>After a feature release, you need to manage your maintenance branches.</p></div>
989 <div class="paragraph"><p>First, if you wish to continue to release maintenance fixes for the
990 feature release made before the recent one, then you must create
991 another branch to track commits for that previous release.</p></div>
992 <div class="paragraph"><p>To do this, the current maintenance branch is copied to another branch
993 named with the previous release version number (e.g. maint-X.Y.(Z-1)
994 where X.Y.Z is the current release).</p></div>
995 <div class="exampleblock">
996 <div class="title">Recipe: Copy maint</div>
997 <div class="content">
998 <div class="paragraph"><p><code>git branch maint-X.Y.(Z-1) maint</code></p></div>
999 </div></div>
1000 <div class="paragraph"><p>The <em>maint</em> branch should now be fast-forwarded to the newly released
1001 code so that maintenance fixes can be tracked for the current release:</p></div>
1002 <div class="exampleblock">
1003 <div class="title">Recipe: Update maint to new release</div>
1004 <div class="content">
1005 <div class="ulist"><ul>
1006 <li>
1008 <code>git checkout maint</code>
1009 </p>
1010 </li>
1011 <li>
1013 <code>git merge --ff-only master</code>
1014 </p>
1015 </li>
1016 </ul></div>
1017 </div></div>
1018 <div class="paragraph"><p>If the merge fails because it is not a fast-forward, then it is
1019 possible some fixes on <em>maint</em> were missed in the feature release.
1020 This will not happen if the content of the branches was verified as
1021 described in the previous section.</p></div>
1022 </div>
1023 <div class="sect2">
1024 <h3 id="_branch_management_for_next_and_seen_after_a_feature_release">Branch management for next and seen after a feature release</h3>
1025 <div class="paragraph"><p>After a feature release, the integration branch <em>next</em> may optionally be
1026 rewound and rebuilt from the tip of <em>master</em> using the surviving
1027 topics on <em>next</em>:</p></div>
1028 <div class="exampleblock">
1029 <div class="title">Recipe: Rewind and rebuild next</div>
1030 <div class="content">
1031 <div class="ulist"><ul>
1032 <li>
1034 <code>git switch -C next master</code>
1035 </p>
1036 </li>
1037 <li>
1039 <code>git merge ai/topic_in_next1</code>
1040 </p>
1041 </li>
1042 <li>
1044 <code>git merge ai/topic_in_next2</code>
1045 </p>
1046 </li>
1047 <li>
1049 &#8230;
1050 </p>
1051 </li>
1052 </ul></div>
1053 </div></div>
1054 <div class="paragraph"><p>The advantage of doing this is that the history of <em>next</em> will be
1055 clean. For example, some topics merged into <em>next</em> may have initially
1056 looked promising, but were later found to be undesirable or premature.
1057 In such a case, the topic is reverted out of <em>next</em> but the fact
1058 remains in the history that it was once merged and reverted. By
1059 recreating <em>next</em>, you give another incarnation of such topics a clean
1060 slate to retry, and a feature release is a good point in history to do
1061 so.</p></div>
1062 <div class="paragraph"><p>If you do this, then you should make a public announcement indicating
1063 that <em>next</em> was rewound and rebuilt.</p></div>
1064 <div class="paragraph"><p>The same rewind and rebuild process may be followed for <em>seen</em>. A public
1065 announcement is not necessary since <em>seen</em> is a throw-away branch, as
1066 described above.</p></div>
1067 </div>
1068 </div>
1069 </div>
1070 <div class="sect1">
1071 <h2 id="_distributed_workflows">DISTRIBUTED WORKFLOWS</h2>
1072 <div class="sectionbody">
1073 <div class="paragraph"><p>After the last section, you should know how to manage topics. In
1074 general, you will not be the only person working on the project, so
1075 you will have to share your work.</p></div>
1076 <div class="paragraph"><p>Roughly speaking, there are two important workflows: merge and patch.
1077 The important difference is that the merge workflow can propagate full
1078 history, including merges, while patches cannot. Both workflows can
1079 be used in parallel: in <code>git.git</code>, only subsystem maintainers use
1080 the merge workflow, while everyone else sends patches.</p></div>
1081 <div class="paragraph"><p>Note that the maintainer(s) may impose restrictions, such as
1082 "Signed-off-by" requirements, that all commits/patches submitted for
1083 inclusion must adhere to. Consult your project&#8217;s documentation for
1084 more information.</p></div>
1085 <div class="sect2">
1086 <h3 id="_merge_workflow">Merge workflow</h3>
1087 <div class="paragraph"><p>The merge workflow works by copying branches between upstream and
1088 downstream. Upstream can merge contributions into the official
1089 history; downstream base their work on the official history.</p></div>
1090 <div class="paragraph"><p>There are three main tools that can be used for this:</p></div>
1091 <div class="ulist"><ul>
1092 <li>
1094 <a href="git-push.html">git-push(1)</a> copies your branches to a remote repository,
1095 usually to one that can be read by all involved parties;
1096 </p>
1097 </li>
1098 <li>
1100 <a href="git-fetch.html">git-fetch(1)</a> that copies remote branches to your repository;
1102 </p>
1103 </li>
1104 <li>
1106 <a href="git-pull.html">git-pull(1)</a> that does fetch and merge in one go.
1107 </p>
1108 </li>
1109 </ul></div>
1110 <div class="paragraph"><p>Note the last point. Do <em>not</em> use <em>git pull</em> unless you actually want
1111 to merge the remote branch.</p></div>
1112 <div class="paragraph"><p>Getting changes out is easy:</p></div>
1113 <div class="exampleblock">
1114 <div class="title">Recipe: Push/pull: Publishing branches/topics</div>
1115 <div class="content">
1116 <div class="paragraph"><p><code>git push &lt;remote&gt; &lt;branch&gt;</code> and tell everyone where they can fetch
1117 from.</p></div>
1118 </div></div>
1119 <div class="paragraph"><p>You will still have to tell people by other means, such as mail. (Git
1120 provides the <a href="git-request-pull.html">git-request-pull(1)</a> to send preformatted pull
1121 requests to upstream maintainers to simplify this task.)</p></div>
1122 <div class="paragraph"><p>If you just want to get the newest copies of the integration branches,
1123 staying up to date is easy too:</p></div>
1124 <div class="exampleblock">
1125 <div class="title">Recipe: Push/pull: Staying up to date</div>
1126 <div class="content">
1127 <div class="paragraph"><p>Use <code>git fetch &lt;remote&gt;</code> or <code>git remote update</code> to stay up to date.</p></div>
1128 </div></div>
1129 <div class="paragraph"><p>Then simply fork your topic branches from the stable remotes as
1130 explained earlier.</p></div>
1131 <div class="paragraph"><p>If you are a maintainer and would like to merge other people&#8217;s topic
1132 branches to the integration branches, they will typically send a
1133 request to do so by mail. Such a request looks like</p></div>
1134 <div class="listingblock">
1135 <div class="content">
1136 <pre><code>Please pull from
1137 &lt;URL&gt; &lt;branch&gt;</code></pre>
1138 </div></div>
1139 <div class="paragraph"><p>In that case, <em>git pull</em> can do the fetch and merge in one go, as
1140 follows.</p></div>
1141 <div class="exampleblock">
1142 <div class="title">Recipe: Push/pull: Merging remote topics</div>
1143 <div class="content">
1144 <div class="paragraph"><p><code>git pull &lt;URL&gt; &lt;branch&gt;</code></p></div>
1145 </div></div>
1146 <div class="paragraph"><p>Occasionally, the maintainer may get merge conflicts when they try to
1147 pull changes from downstream. In this case, they can ask downstream to
1148 do the merge and resolve the conflicts themselves (perhaps they will
1149 know better how to resolve them). It is one of the rare cases where
1150 downstream <em>should</em> merge from upstream.</p></div>
1151 </div>
1152 <div class="sect2">
1153 <h3 id="_patch_workflow">Patch workflow</h3>
1154 <div class="paragraph"><p>If you are a contributor that sends changes upstream in the form of
1155 emails, you should use topic branches as usual (see above). Then use
1156 <a href="git-format-patch.html">git-format-patch(1)</a> to generate the corresponding emails
1157 (highly recommended over manually formatting them because it makes the
1158 maintainer&#8217;s life easier).</p></div>
1159 <div class="exampleblock">
1160 <div class="title">Recipe: format-patch/am: Publishing branches/topics</div>
1161 <div class="content">
1162 <div class="ulist"><ul>
1163 <li>
1165 <code>git format-patch -M upstream..topic</code> to turn them into preformatted
1166 patch files
1167 </p>
1168 </li>
1169 <li>
1171 <code>git send-email --to=&lt;recipient&gt; &lt;patches&gt;</code>
1172 </p>
1173 </li>
1174 </ul></div>
1175 </div></div>
1176 <div class="paragraph"><p>See the <a href="git-format-patch.html">git-format-patch(1)</a> and <a href="git-send-email.html">git-send-email(1)</a>
1177 manpages for further usage notes.</p></div>
1178 <div class="paragraph"><p>If the maintainer tells you that your patch no longer applies to the
1179 current upstream, you will have to rebase your topic (you cannot use a
1180 merge because you cannot format-patch merges):</p></div>
1181 <div class="exampleblock">
1182 <div class="title">Recipe: format-patch/am: Keeping topics up to date</div>
1183 <div class="content">
1184 <div class="paragraph"><p><code>git pull --rebase &lt;URL&gt; &lt;branch&gt;</code></p></div>
1185 </div></div>
1186 <div class="paragraph"><p>You can then fix the conflicts during the rebase. Presumably you have
1187 not published your topic other than by mail, so rebasing it is not a
1188 problem.</p></div>
1189 <div class="paragraph"><p>If you receive such a patch series (as maintainer, or perhaps as a
1190 reader of the mailing list it was sent to), save the mails to files,
1191 create a new topic branch and use <em>git am</em> to import the commits:</p></div>
1192 <div class="exampleblock">
1193 <div class="title">Recipe: format-patch/am: Importing patches</div>
1194 <div class="content">
1195 <div class="paragraph"><p><code>git am &lt; patch</code></p></div>
1196 </div></div>
1197 <div class="paragraph"><p>One feature worth pointing out is the three-way merge, which can help
1198 if you get conflicts: <code>git am -3</code> will use index information contained
1199 in patches to figure out the merge base. See <a href="git-am.html">git-am(1)</a> for
1200 other options.</p></div>
1201 </div>
1202 </div>
1203 </div>
1204 <div class="sect1">
1205 <h2 id="_see_also">SEE ALSO</h2>
1206 <div class="sectionbody">
1207 <div class="paragraph"><p><a href="gittutorial.html">gittutorial(7)</a>,
1208 <a href="git-push.html">git-push(1)</a>,
1209 <a href="git-pull.html">git-pull(1)</a>,
1210 <a href="git-merge.html">git-merge(1)</a>,
1211 <a href="git-rebase.html">git-rebase(1)</a>,
1212 <a href="git-format-patch.html">git-format-patch(1)</a>,
1213 <a href="git-send-email.html">git-send-email(1)</a>,
1214 <a href="git-am.html">git-am(1)</a></p></div>
1215 </div>
1216 </div>
1217 <div class="sect1">
1218 <h2 id="_git">GIT</h2>
1219 <div class="sectionbody">
1220 <div class="paragraph"><p>Part of the <a href="git.html">git(1)</a> suite</p></div>
1221 </div>
1222 </div>
1223 </div>
1224 <div id="footnotes"><hr /></div>
1225 <div id="footer">
1226 <div id="footer-text">
1227 Last updated
1228 2021-12-10 14:52:02 PST
1229 </div>
1230 </div>
1231 </body>
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