Git Notes

My notes, links and annotations for GIT and using it with a central Subversion/SVN repo

Intros to git:

• basic git tutorial video 60 min
• git user manual
• git man pages
• git crash course for svn users
• working with a remote repository (github, pull, fetch, push) (video 10 minutes)
• git magic (Ben Lynn)

Working with git and Subversion:

• Basic introduction to using git-svn
• remote tracking branches (also applies to git-svn tracked branches)

Blogs, Opinions:

• Linus Torvalds on git (at google, video 70 minutes)
• staging/index explanation and uses

Books:

• pragmatic-version-control-using-git
• http://progit.org/ (available fully online)

ONGOING NOTES:

my development procedure (to be completed and tested):

• setup git repo by cloning (only) the subversion trunk (but full history!)

1. cd d:/git
2. git svn clone http://svn1.sbb.ch/polar/client/trunk
3. cd trunk

• create a branch for own work

1. git checkout -b test3

• get updates from subversion

1. frequently (daily?) run "git svn fetch" to pull changes into the remote branch without doing anything - slow because svn need to create diff sets for each change. Run in background.
2. rebase/merge master frequently "git svn rebase -m" - puts master and svn in sync

• merge branch locally

1. git checkout master // switch to workspace to master
2. git merge test3 // merge changes from test3 branch
3. git mergetool // to handle conflicts using the graphical tortoisemerge
4. git add // mark merge conflicts as resolved
5. git commit -m "manually merged conflicts"

• commit to subversion

1. ensure master branch and remote git-svn are in sync (git svn rebase -m)
2. git svn dcommit
3. empty directories in svn must be manually removed

Observations:

• initial clone for our client/trunk SVN takes several hours (~4h for 2000 revisions)
• fetch, update or rebase takes quite a while (up to 1h - many svn changes because of experiments with mvn release)

Useful-looking at first glance, yet to grok:
git helper scripts
git ready
merging screencast (video 10 minutes)

Noteworthy features of git:

• merges that work unless there really is a conflict
• speed
• staging/index - ability to work on multiple things and separate a commitable set from the resulting mixture of changes, even if changes affect the same files
• easy addition to the most recent commit, shuffling and reordering of commit chunks after the fact
• gitk visual representation of all branches, changes, merges
• distributed - not very relevant in central-SVN context, although useful for local feature branches