Git commands for contributors

While we're mostly used to working with source control, working with a fork and making sure we can merge swiftly brings some additional challenges. This page aims to help you out with the things you might get asked to do, but may be outside of your comfort zone.

Sit back, relax and bring your towel.

If you're not comfortable using git from the CLI, we advise to use GitKraken. It's the best cross platform git tool and we've added instructions on how to use it below as well.

I didn't stick to the conventional commit guidelines

GitKraken

Open your aliae repo inside GitKraken and right click the commit you want to reword in the graph overview. Select Edit commit message, reword it to respect the conventional commit guidelines and press Update message.

Click Push on the top of the screen and select Force Push to bring the changes to the Pull Request.

CLI

I only have 1 commit

To reword the last commit, we can make use of git's --amend switch to add something to our latest commit (code, changes, rewording). Use the following comands to rephrase the last commit and get that change merged!

git commit --amend -m "feat: better worded feature"`
git push --force

I added more than commit

If all of your commits need to go to main because it makes sense to treat these as atomic units, you can use git's interactive rebase functionality to reword any commit between main and your HEAD. To start an interactive rebase, type git rebase -i main.

This will open your $EDITOR and you can mark the commits you want to reword with reword (or r) rather than pick. Exiting that file will start the rebase and spwan your $EDITOR to alter the commit message for each commit you marked as reword.

Once done, use git push --force to bring the changes to the pull request.

vscode

The latest version of vscode has a built-in gui to help you select reword or any other action on a commit. Select the right ones and press Start Rebase to continue.

My branch is out of date with the remote

This means the main branch of aliae contains commits your branch does not (could be your main branch, or the branch you created to work on). To remedy this, we need to rebase (add the new commits of aliae's main branch underneath your new commits) so the pull request can get merged.

The first thing to do is to add the aliae codebase as a remote to your local git repository. By default, your fork is a standalone copy of aliae with its own remote on GitHub that's not connected to the aliae codebase. Forks and Pull Requests are a feature GitHub introduced on top of git functionality, so we need to mimic that situation ourselves.

Add the remote to you local git repository

GitKraken

Hover over Remote on the left hand side, this will show a + button. Click it and select GitHub. There you have the ability to select jandedobbeleer/aliae and name it upstream. GitKraken will fetch the remote and you will see all branches underneath upstream as you do for your own branches. Right click upstream's main branch and select Rebase <branch> onto upstream/main.

Click Push on the top of the screen and select Force Push to bring the changes to the Pull Request.

CLI

git remote add upstream git@github.com:JanDeDobbeleer/aliae.git
git fetch upstream

Rebase your branch onto upstream/main

GitKraken

Right click upstream's main branch and select Rebase <branch> onto upstream/main. Click Push on the top of the screen and select Force Push to bring the changes to the Pull Request.

CLI

git rebase upstream/main
git push --force