Git Teamwork
Git Collaboration Workflow
A common Git collaboration workflow is:
- Fetch and merge changes from the remote
- Create a branch to work on a new project feature
- Develop the feature on a branch and commit the work
- Fetch and merge from the remote again (in case new commits were made)
- Push branch up to the remote for review
Steps 1 and 4 are a safeguard against merge conflicts, which occur when two branches contain file changes that cannot be merged with the git merge command.
List the Git Remotes
In Git, the git remote -v command returns a verbose list of remote repositories that the current project is tied to.
- Git lists the name of the remote repository as well as its locations.
- Git automatically names this remote
origin, because it refers to the remote repository of origin. However, it is possible to safely change its name. - The remote is listed twice: once for
(fetch)and once for(push).
$ git remote -vorigin /home/ccuser/workspace/curriculum/science-quizzes/ (fetch)origin /home/ccuser/workspace/curriculum/science-quizzes/ (push)
Pushing Branch Changes
In Git, the git push origin branch-name command pushes the branch, and all committed changes, to the remote. This branch can now be reviewed by collaborators.
In the example, the current branch containing the committed changes is called bio-questions.
$ git push origin bio-questionsCounting objects: 3, done.Delta compression using up to 16 threads.Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 392 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)To /home/ccuser/workspace/curriculum-a/science-quizzes* [new branch] bio-questions -> bio-questions
Cloning a Remote Repository
In Git, the git clone remote_location clone_name command creates a local copy of a remote repository.
remote_locationtells Git where to find the remote repository and can be a filepath or web address.clone_nameis the name of the directory where the remote repository’s contents will be copied.
In the example, my-quizzes is a new directory created as a local copy of the science-quizzes Git project. Committing changes to my-quizzes will not impact science-quizzes.
$ lsscience-quizzes$ git clone science-quizzes/ my-quizzesCloning into 'my-quizzes'...done.$ lsmy-quizzes science-quizzes
Fetching Remote Origin Changes
In Git, the git fetch command downloads objects from the origin remote repository. The changes, however, are not merged into the current branch-name branch. Instead, they are stored in the origin/branch-name branch, waiting to be merged.
In the provided example, using the git branch -a command to see the existing branches, we can see that fetched data has been stored in a new origin/master branch.
$ git branch -a* master$ git fetchremote: Counting objects: 5, done.remote: Compressing objects: 100% (5/5), done.remote: Total 5 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)Unpacking objects: 100% (5/5), done.From /home/ccuser/workspace/curriculum-a/science-quizzes* [new branch] master -> origin/master$ git branch -a* masterremotes/origin/master
Git Remote
A remote is a shared Git repository that allows multiple collaborators to work on the same Git project from different locations. Collaborators work on the project independently and merge changes together when they are ready to do so.
Merging Fetched Changes
In Git, the git merge origin/branch-name command will merge fetched changes, stored in origin/branch-name to the current branch-name branch.
In the example, master is the name of the branch being merged.
$ git merge origin/masterUpdating 2fd7d9b..3a29454Fast-forwardbiology.txt | 4 ++++1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)create mode 100644 biology.txt
