我的git工作流程是否正确且符合我的团队？

Question

I'm helping some guys out with a project and I haven't before used Git collaboratively, so I'm rusty and want to get this right.

Background

There is no forking. I have been advised to make a direct clone of the repo, and then branch.

origin/master contains the production-ready code for the current release

origin/develop contains the code for the latest development changes for the next release

My Git workflow draft

1. Clone the repo to my local machine:

   $ git clone <origin-url>

2. Create new branch:

   $ git checkout -b newFeature develop

3. Makes changes, stage and commit them:

    $ git add . $ git commit -m "<message>" 

4. Push changes to remote newFeature branch (this branch does not yet exist in the origin repo):

    $ git push origin newFeature 

5. Submit a pull request to merge origin/newFeature into origin/develop .

6. Delete the local branch upon acceptance of pull request:

   $ git branch -d newFeature

Questions

• Am I right in thinking that I need to ensure my local develop branch is up to date with origin/develop before I push up my newFeature branch? This way, I will help my colleague to avoid merge conflicts and allow for a fast-forward merge?

• What is the best way to do this? Should I pull the origin/develop branch to my local machine at regular intervals?

• Will Git notify me that the code is not up to date when I try to push the branch? Will it block the push?

• Is it necessary to branch off develop specifically, at stage 2? Does it matter if I just use this command?

  $ git checkout -b newFeature

Answer 1

Am I right in thinking that I need to ensure my local develop branch is up to date with origin/develop before I push up my newFeature branch? This way, I will help my colleague to avoid merge conflicts and allow for a fast-forward merge?

Yes. Before you do your push:

git checkout develop
git pull origin develop
git checkout newFeature
git rebase develop

This assumes that nobody else as worked on newFeature , as in your scenario. If someone else got your branch too, then the rebase might need additional communication with them, or you would maybe (although I hate that, personally, as it is completely wrong on all levels, though most people do it this way), merge develop into newFeature instead.

What is the best way to do this? Should I pull the origin/develop branch to my local machine at regular intervals?

Absolutely. With git, you try to do as frequent committing, pulling, pushing as you can. The earlier you do it, the less likely it is that you get a monster merge which leaves you with no way out (in the sense that you can't understand what the huge change did). Smaller units are much easier to handle.

Will Git notify me that the code is not up to date when I try to push the branch? Will it block the push?

Yes, it will not allow that and give you a meaningful message. You can only push either a fast-forward, or, if a fast-forward is not possible (ie, you diverged), you can do a forced push, which is like replacing the target, and will get you into trouble with your colleagues unless you are the "master of all". You can never do an implicit merge while pushing, it's "either/or", by design.

Note that the exception here is "your" newFeature branch, assuming you are the only one working on it. Then, after your rebase as shown above, you will have exactly this "blocked" situation and you must use "--force" with the push to get it to the remote. As long as nobody else pulled your branch and worked on it, this is fine though.

Is it necessary to branch off develop specifically, at stage 2? Does it matter if I just use this command? git checkout -b newFeature

This command branches off of whatever is the current branch in your working directory, so in theory it could go wrong if you get confused. After the clone, by default, the master branch is active. So yes, you will either need to specifiy develop explicitely, or do a git checkout develop beforehand.