Workflow

For information about how your workflow should go using git to keep track of changes to the main repository, see Git Workflow

Understanding Git

For developers transitioning from a Centralized Version Control System (CVCS) such as SVN to a Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) such as Git, the Pro Git book can be useful.  A free version of the book can be read on-line or downloaded.

Another good resource is Think Like A Git, a site who's main page states "Git shouldn't be so hard to learn."

Git and Eclipse

The latest version of Eclipse (indigo) comes with a URL for installing EGit.  The EGit eclipse plugin provides eclipse with git support.  A good place to start is the User's guild: http://wiki.eclipse.org/EGit/User_Guide.

The following guild is also useful for setting up your Git/Eclipse workflow: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Platform-releng/Git_Workflows.

If you are having problems getting Eclipse + Maven + EGit to work together, here is a post with various workarounds: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4869815/importing-a-maven-project-into-eclipse-from-git.

How to get the Synapse-Repository-Services (or any) project from Github into Eclipse

  1. Create a GitHub user account
    1. Internal Sage developers will be added as a developer on the project and will be able to push directly
    2. External contributors should fork the repository and submit GitHub Pull Requests for code inclusion
  2. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/Sage-Bionetworks/Synapse-Repository-Services
    1. This clones the 'Synapse-Repository-Services' project to your local machine.  Repeat for other projects, e.g. SynapseWebClient.
  3. Import the project as a maven project
    1. File -> Import -> Maven -> Existing Maven Projects
    2. Next, in Root Directory enter the local path to your repository clone
    3. Next, Finish 
  4. Enable Git Team tracking
    1. Now right click on portal (project name) -> Team -> Share Project
    2. Next, Select repository type Git
    3. Next, Check the box "Use or create repository in parent folder of project
    4. Next, Finish

Installing Git on Windows w/Cygwin

While Cygwin comes with a version of Git bundled, we had problems getting to work.  As a workaround we installed the latest version of Git for windows :http://git-scm.com/downloads, which fixed our issues.  The following instructions were used:

Download and run the Git for windows: Git http://git-scm.com/downloads and run the Git-<version>-preview<date>.exe

  1. choose a simple destination locations such as: C:\git-1.7.10
  2. "How would you like to run Git from the command line?"
    1. We choose this option since Cygwin already had an old version of Git installed.
  3. "Which Secure Shell client woud you like git to use?"
    1. We chose "Use OpenSSH"
  4. "How would you like git to treat line ending?"
    1. We selected "Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings"

Once you have Git installed, you will need to setup the PATH

First add an environment variable:

 GIT_HOME=C:\git-1.7.10 (use the same path you set in the first step of the installer)

Next append this to your PATH

;%GIT_HOME%/bin

Start Cygiwn

Determine where the old version of git is currently running from:

$ which git
/usr/bin/git

Since this old version of Git was not working we simply renamed it:

mv /usr/bin/git /usr/bin/git-old

After restarting Cygwin the new version of git was being used:

$ which git
/cygdrive/c/git-1.7.10/bin/git
$ git --version
git version 1.7.10.msysgit.1

 

Tips and Tricks

This is a compilation of some potentially useful git commands and/or aliases

 

1) Command Line commit graph

This is a nifty little command-line for displaying all of a repository's history in a pretty way from a terminal

git log --graph --full-history --all --color --pretty=tformat:"%x1b[31m%h%x09%x1b[32m%d%x1b[0m%x20%s%x20%x1b[33m(%an)%x1b[0m"

you can also create an alias for this:

git config --global alias.gr 'log --graph --full-history --all --color 
    --pretty=tformat:"%x1b[31m%h%x09%x1b[32m%d%x1b[0m%x20%s%x20%x1b[33m(%an)%x1b[0m"'

Remove the '–global' if you don't want this alias to be set globally, and only have it be available in one repository.

Now all you have to type is 'git gr'

 

2) Ignoring local changes to a tracked repository file

For example, if you have changed the pom.xml of your maven project to depend on a SNAPSHOT of the main PLFM libraries, or some other local change that you shouldn't ever check in to the main repository.  Read more about it on this blog.

git update-index --assume-unchanged FILENAME

To make the changes to the file noticed by git again:

git update-index --no-assume-unchanged FILENAME

PITFALL - must be run against every new checkout of the repository.  I'm not sure if this means when you swap branches, but I suspect it may.