Pkg.submit suggestions

[ggggggggg]

First, Pkg.submit is pretty cool, I just used it to submit a pull request to HDF5.jl. It definitely easier to approach for the non-expert than figuring out how to fork and sync my changes with github myself. That said, it took me a few tries to realize that 1. I need to commit my changes (yes this is obvious, but hey I'm not that good at this) 2. what to do about it. The current behavior has you looking at an empty pull request when you haven't committed your changes locally.

My recommendation is for submit to look at the current branch, and it is in the default detached HEAD state, to print out some guidance like. Perhaps something like the following:

Before submitting a pull request you must commit your changes. Try "checkout -b newbranch" followed by "git add ." and "git commit -m "some useful commit message".

It would also be nice if it set up your branch such that git push pushes to the pull request branch that submit had created on github for easily updating that pull request.

[ivarne]

Maybe also look warn if there are uncommitted changes.

[ggggggggg]

Here is a more complete sketch of what I think would be useful to git novices. I may have gotten the git best practices wrong. Also since Pkg.submit() already opens a page in your browser, maybe it makes sense to just open to a page on submitting to Julia packages for beginnings, then that page can be updated without altering Julia at all.

Pkg has noticed that your local git repository is not ready to create a pull request.

Best practice is to create a feature branch before you make any changes.

git checkout master
git checkout -b yourfeaturebranch

Then make your changes, including adding relevant test cases in to test/runtests.jl, and ensure the tests all pass. Then commit your changes before running Pkg.submit("PackageName") again.

git add .
git commit -m "useful commit message"

If you have already made changes, the workflow is slightly different.

git checkout -b yourfeaturebranch
git rebase -i origin/master
git add .
git commit -m "useful commit message"

If there are conflicts during the rebase fix them then git rebase --continue.

Once you have submitted your pull request, you may be asked to make further modifications before it is accepted. Pkg.submit() has configured your branch such that push XXX YYY will push any new commits on yourfeaturebranch to the pull request.

[StefanKarpinski]

These are good suggestions – thanks!

[toivoh]

I can't seem to find any documentation for Pkg.submit, although the feature is listed in the news for Julia 0.3. Seems like a great feature if I dared to try it!

[kmsquire]

See #6986.

[jakebolewski]

Moved to PkgDev.jl