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
21 I<perl5.git.perl.org>.
23 You can make a read-only clone of the repository by running:
25 % git clone git://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git perl
27 This uses the git protocol (port 9418).
29 If you cannot use the git protocol for firewall reasons, you can also
30 clone via http, though this is much slower:
32 % git clone http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git perl
34 =head1 WORKING WITH THE REPOSITORY
36 Once you have changed into the repository directory, you can inspect
37 it. After a clone the repository will contain a single local branch,
38 which will be the current branch as well, as indicated by the asterisk.
43 Using the -a switch to C<branch> will also show the remote tracking
44 branches in the repository:
52 The branches that begin with "origin" correspond to the "git remote"
53 that you cloned from (which is named "origin"). Each branch on the
54 remote will be exactly tracked by these branches. You should NEVER do
55 work on these remote tracking branches. You only ever do work in a
56 local branch. Local branches can be configured to automerge (on pull)
57 from a designated remote tracking branch. This is the case with the
58 default branch C<blead> which will be configured to merge from the
59 remote tracking branch C<origin/blead>.
61 You can see recent commits:
65 And pull new changes from the repository, and update your local
66 repository (must be clean first)
70 Assuming we are on the branch C<blead> immediately after a pull, this
71 command would be more or less equivalent to:
74 % git merge origin/blead
76 In fact if you want to update your local repository without touching
77 your working directory you do:
81 And if you want to update your remote-tracking branches for all defined
82 remotes simultaneously you can do
86 Neither of these last two commands will update your working directory,
87 however both will update the remote-tracking branches in your
90 To make a local branch of a remote branch:
92 % git checkout -b maint-5.10 origin/maint-5.10
94 To switch back to blead:
98 =head2 Finding out your status
100 The most common git command you will use will probably be
104 This command will produce as output a description of the current state
105 of the repository, including modified files and unignored untracked
106 files, and in addition it will show things like what files have been
107 staged for the next commit, and usually some useful information about
108 how to change things. For instance the following:
112 Your branch is ahead of 'origin/blead' by 1 commit.
114 Changes to be committed:
115 (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
117 modified: pod/perlgit.pod
119 Changes not staged for commit:
120 (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
121 (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working
124 modified: pod/perlgit.pod
127 (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
131 This shows that there were changes to this document staged for commit,
132 and that there were further changes in the working directory not yet
133 staged. It also shows that there was an untracked file in the working
134 directory, and as you can see shows how to change all of this. It also
135 shows that there is one commit on the working branch C<blead> which has
136 not been pushed to the C<origin> remote yet. B<NOTE>: This output
137 is also what you see as a template if you do not provide a message to
140 =head2 Patch workflow
142 First, please read L<perlhack> for details on hacking the Perl core.
143 That document covers many details on how to create a good patch.
145 If you already have a Perl repository, you should ensure that you're on
146 the I<blead> branch, and your repository is up to date:
151 It's preferable to patch against the latest blead version, since this
152 is where new development occurs for all changes other than critical bug
153 fixes. Critical bug fix patches should be made against the relevant
154 maint branches, or should be submitted with a note indicating all the
155 branches where the fix should be applied.
157 Now that we have everything up to date, we need to create a temporary
158 new branch for these changes and switch into it:
160 % git checkout -b orange
162 which is the short form of
165 % git checkout orange
167 Creating a topic branch makes it easier for the maintainers to rebase
168 or merge back into the master blead for a more linear history. If you
169 don't work on a topic branch the maintainer has to manually cherry pick
170 your changes onto blead before they can be applied.
172 That'll get you scolded on perl5-porters, so don't do that. Be Awesome.
174 Then make your changes. For example, if Leon Brocard changes his name
175 to Orange Brocard, we should change his name in the AUTHORS file:
177 % perl -pi -e 's{Leon Brocard}{Orange Brocard}' AUTHORS
179 You can see what files are changed:
183 Changes to be committed:
184 (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
188 And you can see the changes:
191 diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
192 index 293dd70..722c93e 100644
195 @@ -541,7 +541,7 @@ Lars Hecking <lhecking@nmrc.ucc.ie>
196 Laszlo Molnar <laszlo.molnar@eth.ericsson.se>
197 Leif Huhn <leif@hale.dkstat.com>
198 Len Johnson <lenjay@ibm.net>
199 -Leon Brocard <acme@astray.com>
200 +Orange Brocard <acme@astray.com>
201 Les Peters <lpeters@aol.net>
202 Lesley Binks <lesley.binks@gmail.com>
203 Lincoln D. Stein <lstein@cshl.org>
205 Now commit your change locally:
207 % git commit -a -m 'Rename Leon Brocard to Orange Brocard'
208 Created commit 6196c1d: Rename Leon Brocard to Orange Brocard
209 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
211 The C<-a> option is used to include all files that git tracks that you
212 have changed. If at this time, you only want to commit some of the
213 files you have worked on, you can omit the C<-a> and use the command
214 C<S<git add I<FILE ...>>> before doing the commit. C<S<git add
215 --interactive>> allows you to even just commit portions of files
216 instead of all the changes in them.
218 The C<-m> option is used to specify the commit message. If you omit it,
219 git will open a text editor for you to compose the message
220 interactively. This is useful when the changes are more complex than
221 the sample given here, and, depending on the editor, to know that the
222 first line of the commit message doesn't exceed the 50 character legal
225 Once you've finished writing your commit message and exited your
226 editor, git will write your change to disk and tell you something like
229 Created commit daf8e63: explain git status and stuff about remotes
230 1 files changed, 83 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
232 If you re-run C<git status>, you should see something like this:
237 (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
241 nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to
244 When in doubt, before you do anything else, check your status and read
245 it carefully, many questions are answered directly by the git status
248 You can examine your last commit with:
252 and if you are not happy with either the description or the patch
253 itself you can fix it up by editing the files once more and then issue:
255 % git commit -a --amend
257 Now you should create a patch file for all your local changes:
259 % git format-patch -M blead..
260 0001-Rename-Leon-Brocard-to-Orange-Brocard.patch
262 Or for a lot of changes, e.g. from a topic branch:
264 % git format-patch --stdout -M blead.. > topic-branch-changes.patch
266 You should now send an email to
267 L<perlbug@perl.org|mailto:perlbug@perl.org> with a description of your
268 changes, and include this patch file as an attachment. In addition to
269 being tracked by RT, mail to perlbug will automatically be forwarded to
270 perl5-porters (with manual moderation, so please be patient). You
271 should only send patches to
272 L<perl5-porters@perl.org|mailto:perl5-porters@perl.org> directly if the
273 patch is not ready to be applied, but intended for discussion.
275 Please do not use git-send-email(1) to send your patch. See L<Sending
276 patch emails|/Sending patch emails> for more information.
278 If you want to delete your temporary branch, you may do so with:
281 % git branch -d orange
282 error: The branch 'orange' is not an ancestor of your current HEAD.
283 If you are sure you want to delete it, run 'git branch -D orange'.
284 % git branch -D orange
285 Deleted branch orange.
287 =head2 Committing your changes
289 Assuming that you'd like to commit all the changes you've made as a
290 single atomic unit, run this command:
294 (That C<-a> tells git to add every file you've changed to this commit.
295 New files aren't automatically added to your commit when you use
296 C<commit -a> If you want to add files or to commit some, but not all of
297 your changes, have a look at the documentation for C<git add>.)
299 Git will start up your favorite text editor, so that you can craft a
300 commit message for your change. See L<perlhack/Commit message> for more
301 information about what makes a good commit message.
303 Once you've finished writing your commit message and exited your
304 editor, git will write your change to disk and tell you something like
307 Created commit daf8e63: explain git status and stuff about remotes
308 1 files changed, 83 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
310 If you re-run C<git status>, you should see something like this:
314 Your branch is ahead of 'origin/blead' by 2 commits.
315 (use "git push" to publish your local commits)
317 (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
321 nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to
324 When in doubt, before you do anything else, check your status and read
325 it carefully, many questions are answered directly by the git status
328 =head2 Sending patch emails
330 After you've generated your patch you should send it
331 to L<perlbug@perl.org|mailto:perlbug@perl.org> (as discussed L<in the
332 previous section|/"Patch workflow">) with a normal mail client as an
333 attachment, along with a description of the patch.
335 You B<must not> use git-send-email(1) to send patches generated with
336 git-format-patch(1). The RT ticketing system living behind
337 L<perlbug@perl.org|mailto:perlbug@perl.org> does not respect the inline
338 contents of E-Mails, sending an inline patch to RT guarantees that your
339 patch will be destroyed.
341 Someone may download your patch from RT, which will result in the
342 subject (the first line of the commit message) being omitted. See
343 L<RT #74192|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=74192> and
344 L<commit a4583001|http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/commitdiff/a4583001>
345 for an example. Alternatively someone may
346 apply your patch from RT after it arrived in their mailbox, by which
347 time RT will have modified the inline content of the message. See
348 L<RT #74532|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=74532> and
349 L<commit f9bcfeac|http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/commitdiff/f9bcfeac>
350 for a bad example of this failure mode.
352 =head2 A note on derived files
354 Be aware that many files in the distribution are derivative--avoid
355 patching them, because git won't see the changes to them, and the build
356 process will overwrite them. Patch the originals instead. Most
357 utilities (like perldoc) are in this category, i.e. patch
358 F<utils/perldoc.PL> rather than F<utils/perldoc>. Similarly, don't
359 create patches for files under F<$src_root/ext> from their copies found
360 in F<$install_root/lib>. If you are unsure about the proper location of
361 a file that may have gotten copied while building the source
362 distribution, consult the F<MANIFEST>.
364 =head2 Cleaning a working directory
366 The command C<git clean> can with varying arguments be used as a
367 replacement for C<make clean>.
369 To reset your working directory to a pristine condition you can do:
373 However, be aware this will delete ALL untracked content. You can use
377 to remove all ignored untracked files, such as build and test
378 byproduct, but leave any manually created files alone.
380 If you only want to cancel some uncommitted edits, you can use C<git
381 checkout> and give it a list of files to be reverted, or C<git checkout
382 -f> to revert them all.
384 If you want to cancel one or several commits, you can use C<git reset>.
388 C<git> provides a built-in way to determine which commit should be blamed
389 for introducing a given bug. C<git bisect> performs a binary search of
390 history to locate the first failing commit. It is fast, powerful and
391 flexible, but requires some setup and to automate the process an auxiliary
392 shell script is needed.
394 The core provides a wrapper program, F<Porting/bisect.pl>, which attempts to
395 simplify as much as possible, making bisecting as simple as running a Perl
396 one-liner. For example, if you want to know when this became an error:
402 .../Porting/bisect.pl -e 'my $a := 2;'
404 Using F<Porting/bisect.pl>, with one command (and no other files) it's easy to
411 Which commit caused this example code to break?
415 Which commit caused this example code to start working?
419 Which commit added the first file to match this regex?
423 Which commit removed the last file to match this regex?
427 usually without needing to know which versions of perl to use as start and
428 end revisions, as F<Porting/bisect.pl> automatically searches to find the
429 earliest stable version for which the test case passes. Run
430 C<Porting/bisect.pl --help> for the full documentation, including how to
431 set the C<Configure> and build time options.
433 If you require more flexibility than F<Porting/bisect.pl> has to offer, you'll
434 need to run C<git bisect> yourself. It's most useful to use C<git bisect run>
435 to automate the building and testing of perl revisions. For this you'll need
436 a shell script for C<git> to call to test a particular revision. An example
437 script is F<Porting/bisect-example.sh>, which you should copy B<outside> of
438 the repository, as the bisect process will reset the state to a clean checkout
439 as it runs. The instructions below assume that you copied it as F<~/run> and
440 then edited it as appropriate.
442 You first enter in bisect mode with:
446 For example, if the bug is present on C<HEAD> but wasn't in 5.10.0,
447 C<git> will learn about this when you enter:
450 % git bisect good perl-5.10.0
451 Bisecting: 853 revisions left to test after this
453 This results in checking out the median commit between C<HEAD> and
454 C<perl-5.10.0>. You can then run the bisecting process with:
456 % git bisect run ~/run
458 When the first bad commit is isolated, C<git bisect> will tell you so:
460 ca4cfd28534303b82a216cfe83a1c80cbc3b9dc5 is first bad commit
461 commit ca4cfd28534303b82a216cfe83a1c80cbc3b9dc5
462 Author: Dave Mitchell <davem@fdisolutions.com>
463 Date: Sat Feb 9 14:56:23 2008 +0000
465 [perl #49472] Attributes + Unknown Error
470 You can peek into the bisecting process with C<git bisect log> and
471 C<git bisect visualize>. C<git bisect reset> will get you out of bisect
474 Please note that the first C<good> state must be an ancestor of the
475 first C<bad> state. If you want to search for the commit that I<solved>
476 some bug, you have to negate your test case (i.e. exit with C<1> if OK
477 and C<0> if not) and still mark the lower bound as C<good> and the
478 upper as C<bad>. The "first bad commit" has then to be understood as
479 the "first commit where the bug is solved".
481 C<git help bisect> has much more information on how you can tweak your
484 =head2 Topic branches and rewriting history
486 Individual committers should create topic branches under
487 B<yourname>/B<some_descriptive_name>:
489 % branch="$yourname/$some_descriptive_name"
490 % git checkout -b $branch
491 ... do local edits, commits etc ...
492 % git push origin -u $branch
494 Should you be stuck with an ancient version of git (prior to 1.7), then
495 C<git push> will not have the C<-u> switch, and you have to replace the
496 last step with the following sequence:
498 % git push origin $branch:refs/heads/$branch
499 % git config branch.$branch.remote origin
500 % git config branch.$branch.merge refs/heads/$branch
502 If you want to make changes to someone else's topic branch, you should
503 check with its creator before making any change to it.
506 might sometimes find that the original author has edited the branch's
507 history. There are lots of good reasons for this. Sometimes, an author
508 might simply be rebasing the branch onto a newer source point.
509 Sometimes, an author might have found an error in an early commit which
510 they wanted to fix before merging the branch to blead.
512 Currently the master repository is configured to forbid
513 non-fast-forward merges. This means that the branches within can not be
514 rebased and pushed as a single step.
516 The only way you will ever be allowed to rebase or modify the history
517 of a pushed branch is to delete it and push it as a new branch under
518 the same name. Please think carefully about doing this. It may be
519 better to sequentially rename your branches so that it is easier for
520 others working with you to cherry-pick their local changes onto the new
521 version. (XXX: needs explanation).
523 If you want to rebase a personal topic branch, you will have to delete
524 your existing topic branch and push as a new version of it. You can do
525 this via the following formula (see the explanation about C<refspec>'s
526 in the git push documentation for details) after you have rebased your
530 % git checkout $user/$topic
532 % git rebase origin/blead
534 # then "delete-and-push"
535 % git push origin :$user/$topic
536 % git push origin $user/$topic
538 B<NOTE:> it is forbidden at the repository level to delete any of the
539 "primary" branches. That is any branch matching
540 C<m!^(blead|maint|perl)!>. Any attempt to do so will result in git
541 producing an error like this:
543 % git push origin :blead
544 *** It is forbidden to delete blead/maint branches in this repository
545 error: hooks/update exited with error code 1
546 error: hook declined to update refs/heads/blead
547 To ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl
548 ! [remote rejected] blead (hook declined)
549 error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl'
551 As a matter of policy we do B<not> edit the history of the blead and
552 maint-* branches. If a typo (or worse) sneaks into a commit to blead or
553 maint-*, we'll fix it in another commit. The only types of updates
554 allowed on these branches are "fast-forwards", where all history is
557 Annotated tags in the canonical perl.git repository will never be
558 deleted or modified. Think long and hard about whether you want to push
559 a local tag to perl.git before doing so. (Pushing simple tags is
564 The perl history contains one mistake which was not caught in the
565 conversion: a merge was recorded in the history between blead and
566 maint-5.10 where no merge actually occurred. Due to the nature of git,
567 this is now impossible to fix in the public repository. You can remove
568 this mis-merge locally by adding the following line to your
569 C<.git/info/grafts> file:
571 296f12bbbbaa06de9be9d09d3dcf8f4528898a49 434946e0cb7a32589ed92d18008aaa1d88515930
573 It is particularly important to have this graft line if any bisecting
574 is done in the area of the "merge" in question.
576 =head1 WRITE ACCESS TO THE GIT REPOSITORY
578 Once you have write access, you will need to modify the URL for the
579 origin remote to enable pushing. Edit F<.git/config> with the
580 git-config(1) command:
582 % git config remote.origin.url ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git
584 You can also set up your user name and e-mail address. Most people do
585 this once globally in their F<~/.gitconfig> by doing something like:
587 % git config --global user.name "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason"
588 % git config --global user.email avarab@gmail.com
590 However, if you'd like to override that just for perl,
591 execute something like the following in F<perl>:
593 % git config user.email avar@cpan.org
595 It is also possible to keep C<origin> as a git remote, and add a new
596 remote for ssh access:
598 % git remote add camel perl5.git.perl.org:/perl.git
600 This allows you to update your local repository by pulling from
601 C<origin>, which is faster and doesn't require you to authenticate, and
602 to push your changes back with the C<camel> remote:
607 The C<fetch> command just updates the C<camel> refs, as the objects
608 themselves should have been fetched when pulling from C<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 Merging from a branch via GitHub
812 While we don't encourage the submission of patches via GitHub, that
813 will still happen. Here is a guide to merging patches from a GitHub
816 % git remote add avar git://github.com/avar/perl.git
819 Now you can see the differences between the branch and blead:
821 % git diff avar/orange
823 And you can see the commits:
825 % git log avar/orange
827 If you approve of a specific commit, you can cherry pick it:
829 % git cherry-pick 0c24b290ae02b2ab3304f51d5e11e85eb3659eae
831 Or you could just merge the whole branch if you like it all:
833 % git merge avar/orange
835 And then push back to the repository:
837 % git push origin blead
839 =head2 Using a smoke-me branch to test changes
841 Sometimes a change affects code paths which you cannot test on the OSes
842 which are directly available to you and it would be wise to have users
843 on other OSes test the change before you commit it to blead.
845 Fortunately, there is a way to get your change smoke-tested on various
846 OSes: push it to a "smoke-me" branch and wait for certain automated
847 smoke-testers to report the results from their OSes.
849 The procedure for doing this is roughly as follows (using the example of
850 of tonyc's smoke-me branch called win32stat):
852 First, make a local branch and switch to it:
854 % git checkout -b win32stat
856 Make some changes, build perl and test your changes, then commit them to
857 your local branch. Then push your local branch to a remote smoke-me
860 % git push origin win32stat:smoke-me/tonyc/win32stat
862 Now you can switch back to blead locally:
866 and continue working on other things while you wait a day or two,
867 keeping an eye on the results reported for your smoke-me branch at
868 L<http://perl.develop-help.com/?b=smoke-me/tonyc/win32state>.
870 If all is well then update your blead branch:
874 then checkout your smoke-me branch once more and rebase it on blead:
876 % git rebase blead win32stat
878 Now switch back to blead and merge your smoke-me branch into it:
881 % git merge win32stat
883 As described earlier, if there are many changes on your smoke-me branch
884 then you should prepare a merge commit in which to give an overview of
885 those changes by using the following command instead of the last
888 % git merge win32stat --no-ff --no-commit
890 You should now build perl and test your (merged) changes one last time
891 (ideally run the whole test suite, but failing that at least run the
892 F<t/porting/*.t> tests) before pushing your changes as usual:
894 % git push origin blead
896 Finally, you should then delete the remote smoke-me branch:
898 % git push origin :smoke-me/tonyc/win32stat
900 (which is likely to produce a warning like this, which can be ignored:
902 remote: fatal: ambiguous argument
903 'refs/heads/smoke-me/tonyc/win32stat':
904 unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
905 remote: Use '--' to separate paths from revisions
907 ) and then delete your local branch:
909 % git branch -d win32stat
911 =head2 A note on camel and dromedary
913 The committers have SSH access to the two servers that serve
914 C<perl5.git.perl.org>. One is C<perl5.git.perl.org> itself (I<camel>),
915 which is the 'master' repository. The second one is
916 C<users.perl5.git.perl.org> (I<dromedary>), which can be used for
917 general testing and development. Dromedary syncs the git tree from
918 camel every few minutes, you should not push there. Both machines also
919 have a full CPAN mirror in F</srv/CPAN>, please use this. To share files
920 with the general public, dromedary serves your F<~/public_html/> as
921 C<http://users.perl5.git.perl.org/~yourlogin/>
923 These hosts have fairly strict firewalls to the outside. Outgoing, only
924 rsync, ssh and git are allowed. For http and ftp, you can use
925 http://webproxy:3128 as proxy. Incoming, the firewall tries to detect
926 attacks and blocks IP addresses with suspicious activity. This
927 sometimes (but very rarely) has false positives and you might get
928 blocked. The quickest way to get unblocked is to notify the admins.
930 These two boxes are owned, hosted, and operated by booking.com. You can
931 reach the sysadmins in #p5p on irc.perl.org or via mail to
932 L<perl5-porters@perl.org|mailto:perl5-porters@perl.org>.