4 Consistent formatting of this file is achieved with:
5 perl ./Porting/podtidy pod/perlgit.pod
9 perlgit - Detailed information about git and the Perl repository
13 This document provides details on using git to develop Perl. If you are
14 just interested in working on a quick patch, see L<perlhack> first.
15 This document is intended for people who are regular contributors to
16 Perl, including those with write access to the git repository.
18 =head1 CLONING THE REPOSITORY
20 All of Perl's source code is kept centrally in a Git repository at
23 You can make a read-only clone of the repository by running:
25 % git clone git@github.com:Perl/perl5.git perl
27 If you cannot use that for firewall reasons, you can also clone via http:
29 % git clone https://github.com/Perl/perl5.git perl
31 =head1 WORKING WITH THE REPOSITORY
33 Once you have changed into the repository directory, you can inspect
34 it. After a clone the repository will contain a single local branch,
35 which will be the current branch as well, as indicated by the asterisk.
40 Using the -a switch to C<branch> will also show the remote tracking
41 branches in the repository:
49 The branches that begin with "origin" correspond to the "git remote"
50 that you cloned from (which is named "origin"). Each branch on the
51 remote will be exactly tracked by these branches. You should NEVER do
52 work on these remote tracking branches. You only ever do work in a
53 local branch. Local branches can be configured to automerge (on pull)
54 from a designated remote tracking branch. This is the case with the
55 default branch C<blead> which will be configured to merge from the
56 remote tracking branch C<origin/blead>.
58 You can see recent commits:
62 And pull new changes from the repository, and update your local
63 repository (must be clean first)
67 Assuming we are on the branch C<blead> immediately after a pull, this
68 command would be more or less equivalent to:
71 % git merge origin/blead
73 In fact if you want to update your local repository without touching
74 your working directory you do:
78 And if you want to update your remote-tracking branches for all defined
79 remotes simultaneously you can do
83 Neither of these last two commands will update your working directory,
84 however both will update the remote-tracking branches in your
87 To make a local branch of a remote branch:
89 % git checkout -b maint-5.10 origin/maint-5.10
91 To switch back to blead:
95 =head2 Finding out your status
97 The most common git command you will use will probably be
101 This command will produce as output a description of the current state
102 of the repository, including modified files and unignored untracked
103 files, and in addition it will show things like what files have been
104 staged for the next commit, and usually some useful information about
105 how to change things. For instance the following:
109 Your branch is ahead of 'origin/blead' by 1 commit.
111 Changes to be committed:
112 (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
114 modified: pod/perlgit.pod
116 Changes not staged for commit:
117 (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
118 (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working
121 modified: pod/perlgit.pod
124 (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
128 This shows that there were changes to this document staged for commit,
129 and that there were further changes in the working directory not yet
130 staged. It also shows that there was an untracked file in the working
131 directory, and as you can see shows how to change all of this. It also
132 shows that there is one commit on the working branch C<blead> which has
133 not been pushed to the C<origin> remote yet. B<NOTE>: This output
134 is also what you see as a template if you do not provide a message to
137 =head2 Patch workflow
139 First, please read L<perlhack> for details on hacking the Perl core.
140 That document covers many details on how to create a good patch.
142 If you already have a Perl repository, you should ensure that you're on
143 the I<blead> branch, and your repository is up to date:
148 It's preferable to patch against the latest blead version, since this
149 is where new development occurs for all changes other than critical bug
150 fixes. Critical bug fix patches should be made against the relevant
151 maint branches, or should be submitted with a note indicating all the
152 branches where the fix should be applied.
154 Now that we have everything up to date, we need to create a temporary
155 new branch for these changes and switch into it:
157 % git checkout -b orange
159 which is the short form of
162 % git checkout orange
164 Creating a topic branch makes it easier for the maintainers to rebase
165 or merge back into the master blead for a more linear history. If you
166 don't work on a topic branch the maintainer has to manually cherry pick
167 your changes onto blead before they can be applied.
169 That'll get you scolded on perl5-porters, so don't do that. Be Awesome.
171 Then make your changes. For example, if Leon Brocard changes his name
172 to Orange Brocard, we should change his name in the AUTHORS file:
174 % perl -pi -e 's{Leon Brocard}{Orange Brocard}' AUTHORS
176 You can see what files are changed:
180 Changes to be committed:
181 (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
185 And you can see the changes:
188 diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
189 index 293dd70..722c93e 100644
192 @@ -541,7 +541,7 @@ Lars Hecking <lhecking@nmrc.ucc.ie>
193 Laszlo Molnar <laszlo.molnar@eth.ericsson.se>
194 Leif Huhn <leif@hale.dkstat.com>
195 Len Johnson <lenjay@ibm.net>
196 -Leon Brocard <acme@astray.com>
197 +Orange Brocard <acme@astray.com>
198 Les Peters <lpeters@aol.net>
199 Lesley Binks <lesley.binks@gmail.com>
200 Lincoln D. Stein <lstein@cshl.org>
202 Now commit your change locally:
204 % git commit -a -m 'Rename Leon Brocard to Orange Brocard'
205 Created commit 6196c1d: Rename Leon Brocard to Orange Brocard
206 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
208 The C<-a> option is used to include all files that git tracks that you
209 have changed. If at this time, you only want to commit some of the
210 files you have worked on, you can omit the C<-a> and use the command
211 C<S<git add I<FILE ...>>> before doing the commit. C<S<git add
212 --interactive>> allows you to even just commit portions of files
213 instead of all the changes in them.
215 The C<-m> option is used to specify the commit message. If you omit it,
216 git will open a text editor for you to compose the message
217 interactively. This is useful when the changes are more complex than
218 the sample given here, and, depending on the editor, to know that the
219 first line of the commit message doesn't exceed the 50 character legal
220 maximum. See L<perlhack/Commit message> for more information about what
221 makes a good commit message.
223 Once you've finished writing your commit message and exited your
224 editor, git will write your change to disk and tell you something like
227 Created commit daf8e63: explain git status and stuff about remotes
228 1 files changed, 83 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
230 If you re-run C<git status>, you should see something like this:
235 (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
239 nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to
242 When in doubt, before you do anything else, check your status and read
243 it carefully, many questions are answered directly by the git status
246 You can examine your last commit with:
250 and if you are not happy with either the description or the patch
251 itself you can fix it up by editing the files once more and then issue:
253 % git commit -a --amend
255 Now, create a fork on GitHub to push your branch to, and add it as a
256 remote if you haven't already, as described in the GitHub documentation
257 at L<https://help.github.com/en/articles/working-with-forks>:
259 % git remote add fork git@github.com:MyUser/perl5.git
261 And push the branch to your fork:
263 % git push -u fork orange
265 You should now submit a Pull Request (PR) on GitHub from the new branch
266 to blead. For more information, see the GitHub documentation at
267 L<https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-a-pull-request-from-a-fork>.
269 You can also send patch files to
270 L<perl5-porters@perl.org|mailto:perl5-porters@perl.org> directly if the
271 patch is not ready to be applied, but intended for discussion.
273 To create a patch file for all your local changes:
275 % git format-patch -M blead..
276 0001-Rename-Leon-Brocard-to-Orange-Brocard.patch
278 Or for a lot of changes, e.g. from a topic branch:
280 % git format-patch --stdout -M blead.. > topic-branch-changes.patch
282 If you want to delete your temporary branch, you may do so with:
285 % git branch -d orange
286 error: The branch 'orange' is not an ancestor of your current HEAD.
287 If you are sure you want to delete it, run 'git branch -D orange'.
288 % git branch -D orange
289 Deleted branch orange.
291 =head2 A note on derived files
293 Be aware that many files in the distribution are derivative--avoid
294 patching them, because git won't see the changes to them, and the build
295 process will overwrite them. Patch the originals instead. Most
296 utilities (like perldoc) are in this category, i.e. patch
297 F<utils/perldoc.PL> rather than F<utils/perldoc>. Similarly, don't
298 create patches for files under F<$src_root/ext> from their copies found
299 in F<$install_root/lib>. If you are unsure about the proper location of
300 a file that may have gotten copied while building the source
301 distribution, consult the F<MANIFEST>.
303 =head2 Cleaning a working directory
305 The command C<git clean> can with varying arguments be used as a
306 replacement for C<make clean>.
308 To reset your working directory to a pristine condition you can do:
312 However, be aware this will delete ALL untracked content. You can use
316 to remove all ignored untracked files, such as build and test
317 byproduct, but leave any manually created files alone.
319 If you only want to cancel some uncommitted edits, you can use C<git
320 checkout> and give it a list of files to be reverted, or C<git checkout
321 -f> to revert them all.
323 If you want to cancel one or several commits, you can use C<git reset>.
327 C<git> provides a built-in way to determine which commit should be blamed
328 for introducing a given bug. C<git bisect> performs a binary search of
329 history to locate the first failing commit. It is fast, powerful and
330 flexible, but requires some setup and to automate the process an auxiliary
331 shell script is needed.
333 The core provides a wrapper program, F<Porting/bisect.pl>, which attempts to
334 simplify as much as possible, making bisecting as simple as running a Perl
335 one-liner. For example, if you want to know when this became an error:
341 .../Porting/bisect.pl -e 'my $a := 2;'
343 Using F<Porting/bisect.pl>, with one command (and no other files) it's easy to
350 Which commit caused this example code to break?
354 Which commit caused this example code to start working?
358 Which commit added the first file to match this regex?
362 Which commit removed the last file to match this regex?
366 usually without needing to know which versions of perl to use as start and
367 end revisions, as F<Porting/bisect.pl> automatically searches to find the
368 earliest stable version for which the test case passes. Run
369 C<Porting/bisect.pl --help> for the full documentation, including how to
370 set the C<Configure> and build time options.
372 If you require more flexibility than F<Porting/bisect.pl> has to offer, you'll
373 need to run C<git bisect> yourself. It's most useful to use C<git bisect run>
374 to automate the building and testing of perl revisions. For this you'll need
375 a shell script for C<git> to call to test a particular revision. An example
376 script is F<Porting/bisect-example.sh>, which you should copy B<outside> of
377 the repository, as the bisect process will reset the state to a clean checkout
378 as it runs. The instructions below assume that you copied it as F<~/run> and
379 then edited it as appropriate.
381 You first enter in bisect mode with:
385 For example, if the bug is present on C<HEAD> but wasn't in 5.10.0,
386 C<git> will learn about this when you enter:
389 % git bisect good perl-5.10.0
390 Bisecting: 853 revisions left to test after this
392 This results in checking out the median commit between C<HEAD> and
393 C<perl-5.10.0>. You can then run the bisecting process with:
395 % git bisect run ~/run
397 When the first bad commit is isolated, C<git bisect> will tell you so:
399 ca4cfd28534303b82a216cfe83a1c80cbc3b9dc5 is first bad commit
400 commit ca4cfd28534303b82a216cfe83a1c80cbc3b9dc5
401 Author: Dave Mitchell <davem@fdisolutions.com>
402 Date: Sat Feb 9 14:56:23 2008 +0000
404 [perl #49472] Attributes + Unknown Error
409 You can peek into the bisecting process with C<git bisect log> and
410 C<git bisect visualize>. C<git bisect reset> will get you out of bisect
413 Please note that the first C<good> state must be an ancestor of the
414 first C<bad> state. If you want to search for the commit that I<solved>
415 some bug, you have to negate your test case (i.e. exit with C<1> if OK
416 and C<0> if not) and still mark the lower bound as C<good> and the
417 upper as C<bad>. The "first bad commit" has then to be understood as
418 the "first commit where the bug is solved".
420 C<git help bisect> has much more information on how you can tweak your
423 Following bisection you may wish to configure, build and test perl at
424 commits identified by the bisection process. Sometimes, particularly
425 with older perls, C<make> may fail during this process. In this case
426 you may be able to patch the source code at the older commit point. To
427 do so, please follow the suggestions provided in
428 L<perlhack/Building perl at older commits>.
430 =head2 Topic branches and rewriting history
432 Individual committers should create topic branches under
433 B<yourname>/B<some_descriptive_name>:
435 % branch="$yourname/$some_descriptive_name"
436 % git checkout -b $branch
437 ... do local edits, commits etc ...
438 % git push origin -u $branch
440 Should you be stuck with an ancient version of git (prior to 1.7), then
441 C<git push> will not have the C<-u> switch, and you have to replace the
442 last step with the following sequence:
444 % git push origin $branch:refs/heads/$branch
445 % git config branch.$branch.remote origin
446 % git config branch.$branch.merge refs/heads/$branch
448 If you want to make changes to someone else's topic branch, you should
449 check with its creator before making any change to it.
452 might sometimes find that the original author has edited the branch's
453 history. There are lots of good reasons for this. Sometimes, an author
454 might simply be rebasing the branch onto a newer source point.
455 Sometimes, an author might have found an error in an early commit which
456 they wanted to fix before merging the branch to blead.
458 Currently the master repository is configured to forbid
459 non-fast-forward merges. This means that the branches within can not be
460 rebased and pushed as a single step.
462 The only way you will ever be allowed to rebase or modify the history
463 of a pushed branch is to delete it and push it as a new branch under
464 the same name. Please think carefully about doing this. It may be
465 better to sequentially rename your branches so that it is easier for
466 others working with you to cherry-pick their local changes onto the new
467 version. (XXX: needs explanation).
469 If you want to rebase a personal topic branch, you will have to delete
470 your existing topic branch and push as a new version of it. You can do
471 this via the following formula (see the explanation about C<refspec>'s
472 in the git push documentation for details) after you have rebased your
476 % git checkout $user/$topic
478 % git rebase origin/blead
480 # then "delete-and-push"
481 % git push origin :$user/$topic
482 % git push origin $user/$topic
484 B<NOTE:> it is forbidden at the repository level to delete any of the
485 "primary" branches. That is any branch matching
486 C<m!^(blead|maint|perl)!>. Any attempt to do so will result in git
487 producing an error like this:
489 % git push origin :blead
490 *** It is forbidden to delete blead/maint branches in this repository
491 error: hooks/update exited with error code 1
492 error: hook declined to update refs/heads/blead
493 To ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl
494 ! [remote rejected] blead (hook declined)
495 error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl'
497 As a matter of policy we do B<not> edit the history of the blead and
498 maint-* branches. If a typo (or worse) sneaks into a commit to blead or
499 maint-*, we'll fix it in another commit. The only types of updates
500 allowed on these branches are "fast-forwards", where all history is
503 Annotated tags in the canonical perl.git repository will never be
504 deleted or modified. Think long and hard about whether you want to push
505 a local tag to perl.git before doing so. (Pushing simple tags is
510 The perl history contains one mistake which was not caught in the
511 conversion: a merge was recorded in the history between blead and
512 maint-5.10 where no merge actually occurred. Due to the nature of git,
513 this is now impossible to fix in the public repository. You can remove
514 this mis-merge locally by adding the following line to your
515 C<.git/info/grafts> file:
517 296f12bbbbaa06de9be9d09d3dcf8f4528898a49 434946e0cb7a32589ed92d18008aaa1d88515930
519 It is particularly important to have this graft line if any bisecting
520 is done in the area of the "merge" in question.
522 =head1 WRITE ACCESS TO THE GIT REPOSITORY
524 Once you have write access, you will need to modify the URL for the
525 origin remote to enable pushing. Edit F<.git/config> with the
526 git-config(1) command:
528 % git config remote.origin.url git@github.com:Perl/perl5.git
530 You can also set up your user name and e-mail address. Most people do
531 this once globally in their F<~/.gitconfig> by doing something like:
533 % git config --global user.name "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason"
534 % git config --global user.email avarab@gmail.com
536 However, if you'd like to override that just for perl,
537 execute something like the following in F<perl>:
539 % git config user.email avar@cpan.org
541 It is also possible to keep C<origin> as a git remote, and add a new
542 remote for ssh access:
544 % git remote add camel git@github.com:Perl/perl5.git
546 This allows you to update your local repository by pulling from
547 C<origin>, which is faster and doesn't require you to authenticate, and
548 to push your changes back with the C<camel> remote:
553 The C<fetch> command just updates the C<camel> refs, as the objects
554 themselves should have been fetched when pulling from C<origin>.
556 =head2 Working with Github pull requests
558 Pull requests typically originate from outside of the C<Perl/perl.git>
559 repository, so if you want to test or work with it locally a vanilla
560 C<git fetch> from the C<Perl/perl5.git> repository won't fetch it.
562 However Github does provide a mechanism to fetch a pull request to a
563 local branch. They are available on Github remotes under C<pull/>, so
564 you can use C<< git fetch pull/I<PRID>/head:I<localname> >> to make a
565 local copy. eg. to fetch pull request 9999 to the local branch
566 C<local-branch-name> run:
568 git fetch origin pull/9999/head:local-branch-name
572 git checkout local-branch-name
574 Note: this branch is not rebased on C<blead>, so instead of the
575 checkout above, you might want:
577 git rebase origin/blead local-branch-name
579 which rebases C<local-branch-name> on C<blead>, and checks it out.
581 Alternatively you can configure the remote to fetch all pull requests
582 as remote-tracking branches. To do this edit the remote in
583 F<.git/config>, for example if your github remote is C<origin> you'd
587 url = git@github.com:/Perl/perl5.git
588 fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
590 Add a line to map the remote pull request branches to remote-tracking
594 url = git@github.com:/Perl/perl5.git
595 fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
596 fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pull/*
598 and then do a fetch as normal:
602 This will create a remote-tracking branch for every pull request, including
605 To remove those remote-tracking branches, remove the line added above
608 git fetch -p origin # or git remote prune origin
610 =head2 Accepting a patch
612 If you have received a patch file generated using the above section,
613 you should try out the patch.
615 First we need to create a temporary new branch for these changes and
618 % git checkout -b experimental
620 Patches that were formatted by C<git format-patch> are applied with
623 % git am 0001-Rename-Leon-Brocard-to-Orange-Brocard.patch
624 Applying Rename Leon Brocard to Orange Brocard
626 Note that some UNIX mail systems can mess with text attachments containing
627 'From '. This will fix them up:
629 % perl -pi -e's/^>From /From /' \
630 0001-Rename-Leon-Brocard-to-Orange-Brocard.patch
632 If just a raw diff is provided, it is also possible use this two-step
635 % git apply bugfix.diff
636 % git commit -a -m "Some fixing" \
637 --author="That Guy <that.guy@internets.com>"
639 Now we can inspect the change:
642 commit b1b3dab48344cff6de4087efca3dbd63548ab5e2
643 Author: Leon Brocard <acme@astray.com>
644 Date: Fri Dec 19 17:02:59 2008 +0000
646 Rename Leon Brocard to Orange Brocard
648 diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
649 index 293dd70..722c93e 100644
652 @@ -541,7 +541,7 @@ Lars Hecking <lhecking@nmrc.ucc.ie>
653 Laszlo Molnar <laszlo.molnar@eth.ericsson.se>
654 Leif Huhn <leif@hale.dkstat.com>
655 Len Johnson <lenjay@ibm.net>
656 -Leon Brocard <acme@astray.com>
657 +Orange Brocard <acme@astray.com>
658 Les Peters <lpeters@aol.net>
659 Lesley Binks <lesley.binks@gmail.com>
660 Lincoln D. Stein <lstein@cshl.org>
662 If you are a committer to Perl and you think the patch is good, you can
663 then merge it into blead then push it out to the main repository:
666 % git merge experimental
667 % git push origin blead
669 If you want to delete your temporary branch, you may do so with:
672 % git branch -d experimental
673 error: The branch 'experimental' is not an ancestor of your current
674 HEAD. If you are sure you want to delete it, run 'git branch -D
676 % git branch -D experimental
677 Deleted branch experimental.
679 =head2 Committing to blead
681 The 'blead' branch will become the next production release of Perl.
683 Before pushing I<any> local change to blead, it's incredibly important
684 that you do a few things, lest other committers come after you with
685 pitchforks and torches:
691 Make sure you have a good commit message. See L<perlhack/Commit
692 message> for details.
696 Run the test suite. You might not think that one typo fix would break a
697 test file. You'd be wrong. Here's an example of where not running the
698 suite caused problems. A patch was submitted that added a couple of
699 tests to an existing F<.t>. It couldn't possibly affect anything else, so
700 no need to test beyond the single affected F<.t>, right? But, the
701 submitter's email address had changed since the last of their
702 submissions, and this caused other tests to fail. Running the test
703 target given in the next item would have caught this problem.
707 If you don't run the full test suite, at least C<make test_porting>.
708 This will run basic sanity checks. To see which sanity checks, have a
709 look in F<t/porting>.
713 If you make any changes that affect miniperl or core routines that have
714 different code paths for miniperl, be sure to run C<make minitest>.
715 This will catch problems that even the full test suite will not catch
716 because it runs a subset of tests under miniperl rather than perl.
720 =head2 On merging and rebasing
722 Simple, one-off commits pushed to the 'blead' branch should be simple
723 commits that apply cleanly. In other words, you should make sure your
724 work is committed against the current position of blead, so that you can
725 push back to the master repository without merging.
727 Sometimes, blead will move while you're building or testing your
728 changes. When this happens, your push will be rejected with a message
731 To ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git
732 ! [rejected] blead -> blead (non-fast-forward)
733 error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git'
734 To prevent you from losing history, non-fast-forward updates were
735 rejected Merge the remote changes (e.g. 'git pull') before pushing
736 again. See the 'Note about fast-forwards' section of 'git push --help'
739 When this happens, you can just I<rebase> your work against the new
740 position of blead, like this (assuming your remote for the master
741 repository is "p5p"):
744 % git rebase p5p/blead
746 You will see your commits being re-applied, and you will then be able to
747 push safely. More information about rebasing can be found in the
748 documentation for the git-rebase(1) command.
750 For larger sets of commits that only make sense together, or that would
751 benefit from a summary of the set's purpose, you should use a merge
752 commit. You should perform your work on a L<topic branch|/Topic
753 branches and rewriting history>, which you should regularly rebase
754 against blead to ensure that your code is not broken by blead moving.
755 When you have finished your work, please perform a final rebase and
756 test. Linear history is something that gets lost with every
757 commit on blead, but a final rebase makes the history linear
758 again, making it easier for future maintainers to see what has
759 happened. Rebase as follows (assuming your work was on the
760 branch C<< committer/somework >>):
762 % git checkout committer/somework
765 Then you can merge it into master like this:
768 % git merge --no-ff --no-commit committer/somework
771 The switches above deserve explanation. C<--no-ff> indicates that even
772 if all your work can be applied linearly against blead, a merge commit
773 should still be prepared. This ensures that all your work will be shown
774 as a side branch, with all its commits merged into the mainstream blead
777 C<--no-commit> means that the merge commit will be I<prepared> but not
778 I<committed>. The commit is then actually performed when you run the
779 next command, which will bring up your editor to describe the commit.
780 Without C<--no-commit>, the commit would be made with nearly no useful
781 message, which would greatly diminish the value of the merge commit as a
782 placeholder for the work's description.
784 When describing the merge commit, explain the purpose of the branch, and
785 keep in mind that this description will probably be used by the
786 eventual release engineer when reviewing the next perldelta document.
788 =head2 Committing to maintenance versions
790 Maintenance versions should only be altered to add critical bug fixes,
793 To commit to a maintenance version of perl, you need to create a local
796 % git checkout --track -b maint-5.005 origin/maint-5.005
798 This creates a local branch named C<maint-5.005>, which tracks the
799 remote branch C<origin/maint-5.005>. Then you can pull, commit, merge
802 You can also cherry-pick commits from blead and another branch, by
803 using the C<git cherry-pick> command. It is recommended to use the
804 B<-x> option to C<git cherry-pick> in order to record the SHA1 of the
805 original commit in the new commit message.
807 Before pushing any change to a maint version, make sure you've
808 satisfied the steps in L</Committing to blead> above.
810 =head2 Using a smoke-me branch to test changes
812 Sometimes a change affects code paths which you cannot test on the OSes
813 which are directly available to you and it would be wise to have users
814 on other OSes test the change before you commit it to blead.
816 Fortunately, there is a way to get your change smoke-tested on various
817 OSes: push it to a "smoke-me" branch and wait for certain automated
818 smoke-testers to report the results from their OSes.
819 A "smoke-me" branch is identified by the branch name: specifically, as
820 seen on github.com it must be a local branch whose first name
821 component is precisely C<smoke-me>.
823 The procedure for doing this is roughly as follows (using the example of
824 tonyc's smoke-me branch called win32stat):
826 First, make a local branch and switch to it:
828 % git checkout -b win32stat
830 Make some changes, build perl and test your changes, then commit them to
831 your local branch. Then push your local branch to a remote smoke-me
834 % git push origin win32stat:smoke-me/tonyc/win32stat
836 Now you can switch back to blead locally:
840 and continue working on other things while you wait a day or two,
841 keeping an eye on the results reported for your smoke-me branch at
842 L<http://perl.develop-help.com/?b=smoke-me/tonyc/win32state>.
844 If all is well then update your blead branch:
848 then checkout your smoke-me branch once more and rebase it on blead:
850 % git rebase blead win32stat
852 Now switch back to blead and merge your smoke-me branch into it:
855 % git merge win32stat
857 As described earlier, if there are many changes on your smoke-me branch
858 then you should prepare a merge commit in which to give an overview of
859 those changes by using the following command instead of the last
862 % git merge win32stat --no-ff --no-commit
864 You should now build perl and test your (merged) changes one last time
865 (ideally run the whole test suite, but failing that at least run the
866 F<t/porting/*.t> tests) before pushing your changes as usual:
868 % git push origin blead
870 Finally, you should then delete the remote smoke-me branch:
872 % git push origin :smoke-me/tonyc/win32stat
874 (which is likely to produce a warning like this, which can be ignored:
876 remote: fatal: ambiguous argument
877 'refs/heads/smoke-me/tonyc/win32stat':
878 unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
879 remote: Use '--' to separate paths from revisions
881 ) and then delete your local branch:
883 % git branch -d win32stat