Using git and GitHub

Developing on pioneer means using the version control tool 'git' and the github website. git especially has a reputation for having a steep learning curve, so here we'll try to give you enough knowledge to be dangerous!

Prerequisites

A working installation of git, and a GitHub account.

The GitHub sign-up page is here. Make a note of your user name as we'll need it to make our initial pioneer repositories.

If you're on Linux you quite quite likely have git installed already. If you can type git --version at the command line and get a version number back you're good to go. If you don't have it the package repository for your distribution almost certainly will. Use your distribution's package management tools to download and install it.

If you're the type of Linux user who builds everything from source, rolling your own kernels, I'm going to assume you're already quite familiar with git, and this was not the page you were looking for :)

On Windows you have two options, Git for Windows aka msysgit, or Github for Windows which is essentially msysgit but with some extra stuff bundled. Some of which is good (posh git) and some of which is well, not (github's 'friendly' gui). Since both include the sames command line tools and cross platform gui tools, either is fine for our purposes here. The github one is probably more convenient to install.

Creating your pioneer repositories

git clone git://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer.git

Basic operations

git branch

git status

git checkout <branch-name>

git branch -a <branch-name> ; git checkout <branch-name>
git checkout -b <branch-name>

gitk

git add -A ; git commit
git commit -a

git push origin <branch name>

Updating your branches

git fetch upstream

git merge

git pull --ff-only upstream master

git merge master

Getting code from other branches

git checkout <branch-name> -- <file-name>

git merge <branch-name>

Getting other developer's branches

git remote

git remote add <remote> <url>

git remote update

git checkout -b <branch-name> --track <remote>/<remote-branch-name

Keeping things tidy

git branch -d <branch-name>

git branch -D <branch-name>

git push origin :<branch-name>

git clean -n

git clean -f

Rebasing and cherry picking

Warning: Rebasing and cherry picking, although sometimes useful, can cause problems for other developers if you use them on commits that have already been published to github. Be careful and give sufficient warnings if you find you needing to use them in that situation.

git cherry-pick <commit>

gitk

git rebase <branch-name>

git rebase -i <branch-name>