git-reflow (2015 Fukuoka Ruby Award Winner)¶ ↑

<img src=“https://circleci.com/gh/reenhanced/gitreflow/tree/master.svg?style=svg” alt=“Circle CI” />

If your workflow looks like this:

1. Create a feature branch

2. Write great code

3. Create a pull request against master

4. Get ‘lgtm’ through a code review

5. Squash merge to master (Why is squash merging our preferred workflow? github.com/reenhanced/gitreflow/issues/52)

6. Delete the feature branch

Reflow will make your life easier.

Reflow automatically creates pull requests, ensures the code review is approved, and squash merges finished branches to master with a great commit message template.

Quickstart¶ ↑

Create and switch to new branch nh-branchy-branch:

$ git reflow start nh-branchy-branch

Create a pull request for your branch against master:

$ git reflow review

If your code is ‘LGTM’d, squash merge to master and delete the feature branch:

$ git reflow deliver

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Benefits:¶ ↑

• Enforce code reviews across your team.

• Know that your entire team delivers code the same way.

• Reduce the knowledge needed to deliver great code.

• Have a commit history that’s clean and actually usable.

• Revert features with ease (if needed).

• Work with diverse teams with less worry about different processes.

• Stop searching for other git workflows. Reflow covers 90% of your needs without junk you’ll never use.

Features:¶ ↑

• Automatically create pull requests to master

• Automatically ensure that your code is reviewed before merging

• Start with sensible commit messages by default

• Squash merge feature branches because results are more important than details

• Automatically clean up obsolete feature branches after a successful merge

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How to use¶ ↑

Installation¶ ↑

$ gem install reflow

or

$ gem install git_reflow

(‘git_reflow` is the official gem, and `reflow` just declares `git_reflow` as a dependency.)

Setup¶ ↑

On your first install, you’ll need to setup your Github credentials. These are used only to get an oauth token that’s stored in your global git config. We use the Github credentials so we can create pull requests from the command line.

After installation, run:

git reflow setup

It looks like this:

$ git reflow setup
Please enter your GitHub username: nhance
Please enter your GitHub password (we do NOT store this):

Your GitHub account was successfully setup!

This is safe to run multiple times. We don’t care.

Usage with Github Enterprise¶ ↑

To use GitReflow with a GitHub Enterprise account, there are some additional switches available to the GitReflow setup command. You should be able to use GitReflow for both your Enterprise and non-Enterprise repositories. Because of this, there are a few scenarios that may apply to your usage of GitReflow:

You use a GitHub Enterprise account for the majority of your repositories:

git reflow setup --enterprise

After this, anytime you want to use GitReflow with project that uses a regular GitHub account:

cd replace_with_your_non_enterprise_project_path
git reflow setup --local

This will setup your project’s git config with the OAuth token generated from the credentials you provide

If you only use GitHub Enterprise for a select few repositories, you’ll first want to setup GitReflow as normal:

git reflow setup

Then for your Enterprise projects, you have to setup GitReflow for each one:

cd replace_with_your_enterprise_project_path
git reflow setup --enterprise --local

Starting a feature branch¶ ↑

git reflow start

This sets up a feature branch remotely and brings a local copy to your machine. Yeah, you can do this by hand pretty easily, so skip this command if you want. This is just a handy shortcut with no magic.

$ git reflow start nh-branch-name

PROTIP

Use your initials at the beginning of each branch so your team knows who is responsible for each. My initials are ‘NH’, so all of my branches start with nh-

Reviewing your work¶ ↑

git reflow review

All of our work is reviewed by our team. This helps spread knowledge to multiple parties and keeps the quality of our code consistent.

The review step creates a pull request for the currently checked out feature branch against master. That’s all you want to do most of the time. We assume you know what you’re doing, so if you need something different, do it by hand.

After making commits to your branch, run review. Didn’t push it up? We don’t care, we’ll do it for you.

If you do not pass the title or message options to the review command, you will be given an editor to write your PR request in, similar to ‘git commit`. The first line is the title, the rest is the body.

$ git reflow review         

Review your PR:
--------
Title:
rj_209_test

Body:
[lib] updates review command to address issues
--------
Submit pull request? (Y): <enter>
git fetch origin master
From github.com:meesterdude/gitreflow
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD

git push origin rj_test
Everything up-to-date

Successfully created pull request #6: rj_test
Pull Request URL: https://github.com/meesterdude/gitreflow/pull/6
Would you like to open it in your browser? y

OSX/Ubuntu only

You can automatically open your default web browser to the pull request. This lets you edit the pull request with all of the detailed information you’ll need before submitting it to your team.

We output the pull request URL so you can distribute it to your team without leaving the terminal.

How it works¶ ↑

Behind the scenes, this is how review works:

git fetch origin

Are we up-to-date with changes from master? If not, fail with “master has newer changes”.

Then,

git push origin current-branch # Updates remote branch

Do we have pull request? If not, create it and print “Pull request created at pull-url/”. If so, print the url for the existing request.

Checking your branch status¶ ↑

git reflow status

Sometimes you start working on a branch and can’t get back to it for a while. It happens. Use status to check on the status of your work.

$ git reflow status

Here's the status of your review:
  branches:     reenhanced:nh-readme-update -> reenhanced:master
  number:       35
  reviewed by:
  url:          https://github.com/reenhanced/gitreflow/pull/35

[notice] No one has reviewed your pull request...
Would you like to open it in your browser? n

This gives you details on who’s reviewed your pull request. If someone has participated, but not given you a ‘LGTM’, this will tell you. status prevents you from having to open a browser to find out where your pull request is at. But in case you want to take a look, we give you the option to open it for you.

Delivering approved code¶ ↑

git reflow deliver

You kick butt. You’ve got your code reviewed and now you’re ready to merge it down to master and deploy. Reflow deliver will take care of all of the steps for you to make this happen.

Reflow’s deliver requires you to have a pull request, so you’ll be protected on those mornings when the coffee isn’t working yet. We built this to get in your way and make you follow the process. If you don’t like it, do it by hand. You already know what you’re doing.

You’ll be presented with a prefilled commit message based on the body of your pull request which includes the text Closes #XX that will automatically close the associated pull request on github when deliver completes.

Make a mistake and deliver too early? It happens. You’ll be prompted after you edit your commit message if you want to push your updated master to github. If you answer ‘n’, then you’ll want to do git reset --hard origin/master and checkout your branch again.

This is what it looks like:

$ git reflow deliver
From github.com:reenhanced/gitreflow
* branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD
Merging pull request #36: 'Enforce at least one LGTM before delivery', from 'reenhanced:nh-fail-without-lgtm' into 'reenhanced:master'
Switched to branch 'master'
From github.com:reenhanced/gitreflow
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
Switched to branch 'nh-fail-without-lgtm'
Switched to branch 'master'
Updating c2ec1b1..f90e111
Fast-forward
Squash commit -- not updating HEAD
 lib/git_reflow.rb | 71 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------------
 1 file changed, 35 insertions(+), 36 deletions(-)
[master d1b4dd5] Enforces LGTM before deliver, even with no comments.
 1 file changed, 35 insertions(+), 36 deletions(-)
Merge complete!
Would you like to push this branch to your remote repo and cleanup your feature branch? y
Counting objects: 7, done.
Delta compression using up to 16 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 1.38 KiB, done.
Total 4 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
To git@github.com:reenhanced/gitreflow.git
   c2ec1b1..d1b4dd5  master -> master

To git@github.com:reenhanced/gitreflow.git
 - [deleted]         nh-fail-without-lgtm

Deleted branch nh-fail-without-lgtm (was f90e111).
Nice job buddy.

This is what the default commit message looks like:

Enforces LGTM before deliver, even with no comments.
Removes the need to review the pull request yourself if you make a
comment.

Better error message if setup fails.

Bug fixes.

Closes #36

LGTM given by: @codenamev

Squashed commit of the following:

commit f90e111
Author: Nicholas Hance <nhance@reenhanced.com>
Date:   Thu Jul 11 15:33:29 2013 -0400
...

How it works¶ ↑

This is what we do behind the scenes when you do deliver

• Does a pull request exist?

  If not, stop here. You need to run review.

• Has the review been completed? Did we get a LGTM from everyone who’s participated?

  If not, show a list of authors that need to provide a LGTM.

If the review is done, it’s time to merge. Here’s what happens:

First, update our local master so we don’t get conflicts

git checkout master
git pull origin master

Next, squash merge our feature branch

git merge --squash nh-branch-name

Now, we’ll apply a little magic so we have a great commit message by default. Your editor will open and you’ll see a nice default for your commit message based on the pull request body.

Once you’ve saved the commit, prompt the user to see if we should continue

Merge complete!
Would you like to push this branch to your remote repo and cleanup your feature branch?

If ‘y’, then we’ll push to master and delete the feature branch

git push origin master
git push origin :nh-branch-name
git branch -D nh-branch-name

If ‘n’, then just stop here. The user can reset his local master.

And we’re done.

Guiding principles:¶ ↑

• Your workflow should resemble the following:

• You should already know what you’re doing. We assume you know how to use git.

• The master branch is your codebase. You don’t need multiple branches for code actually want to use.

• master should remain stable at all times. The entire team depends on it.

• No direct commits to master. All work happens in feature branches. From a single commit to hundreds.

• All feature branches are reviewed via pull requests.

• Looks Good To Me. All feature branches require approval. We look for the string ‘LGTM’ in a comment on the pull request to know it’s ready to merge.

• If you make a new commit in your branch, you require another review.

• All participants in a pull request must approve the pull request. If 2 people comment, you need 2 ‘LGTM’s before the code is ready to merge.

• Once approved, your feature branch is squash merged to master. This makes the history of the master branch extremely clean and easy to follow.

• Git blame becomes your friend. You’ll know who to blame and can see the full context of changes. Squash commits to master mean every commit represents the whole feature, not a “typo fix”.

Configuration¶ ↑

In order to streamline delivery you can set the following git config to
always push the branch after merge and clean up the feature branch.

git config --global --add "reflow.always-deploy-and-cleanup" "true"

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Contributing¶ ↑

Pull requests are welcome. Please fork and submit. We use this tool every single day and as long as what you want to add doesn’t change our workflow, we are happy to accept your updates. Feel free to add your github username to the list below.

Authors:

• @codenamev

• @armyofgnomes

• @nhance

Built by Reenhanced: www.reenhanced.com

Looking for a capable team for your project? Get in touch. We’re looking to grow.

Licensed using the MIT license. Do whatever you like with this, but don’t blame us if it breaks anything. You’re a professional, and you’re responsible for the tools you use.