Git Workflow Howtos

This page introduces several common strategies that you will possibly use when you contribute to the codes for this repository.

• How to submit pull request

• How to resolve conflict with master

• How to combine multiple commits into one

• What is the consequence of force push

How to submit pull request

• Before submit, please rebase your code on the most recent version of master, you can do it by

git remote add upstream https://github.com/dmlc/gluon-nlp
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/master

• If you have multiple small commits, it might be good to merge them together(use git rebase then squash) into more meaningful groups.

• Send the pull request!

  • Select “dmlc/gluon-nlp” with “master” branch as the base

  • Fix the problems reported by automatic checks

  • If you are contributing a new module or new function, add a test.

How to resolve conflict with master

• First rebase to most recent master

# The first two steps can be skipped after you do it once.
git remote add upstream https://github.com/dmlc/gluon-nlp
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/master

• The git may show some conflicts it cannot merge, say conflicted.py.

  • Manually modify the file to resolve the conflict.

  • After you resolved the conflict, mark it as resolved by

  git add conflicted.py
  

• Then you can continue rebase by

git rebase --continue

• Finally push to your fork, you may need to force push here.

git push --force

How to combine multiple commits into one

Sometimes we want to combine multiple commits, especially when later commits are only fixes to previous ones, to create a PR with set of meaningful commits. You can do it by following steps. - Before doing so, configure the default editor of git if you haven’t done so before.

git config core.editor the-editor-you-like

• Assume we want to merge last 3 commits, type the following commands

git rebase -i HEAD~3

• It will pop up an text editor. Set the first commit as pick, and change later ones to squash.

• After you saved the file, it will pop up another text editor to ask you modify the combined commit message.

• Push the changes to your fork, you need to force push.

git push --force

Reset to the most recent master

You can always use git reset to reset your version to the most recent master. Note that all your *local changes will get lost*. So only do it when you do not have local changes or when your pull request just get merged.

git reset --hard [hash tag of master]
git push --force

What is the consequence of force push

The previous two tips requires force push, this is because we altered the path of the commits. It is fine to force push to your own fork, as long as the commits changed are only yours.