Version: $Revision$
Last-Modified: $Date$
Author: Oleg Broytman <phd@phdru.name>
-Status: Active
+Status: Draft
Type: Informational
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 01-Jun-2015
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx-installer/files/>`_ or
install git with `Homebrew <http://brew.sh/>`_: ``brew install git``.
+`git-cola <https://git-cola.github.io/index.html>`_ is a sleek and
+powerful Git GUI written in Python and GPL licensed. Linux, Windows,
+MacOS X.
+
+`TortoiseGit <https://tortoisegit.org/>`_ is a Windows Shell Interface
+to Git based on TortoiseSVN; open source.
+
Initial configuration
---------------------
Merge or rebase?
================
+Internet is full of heated discussions on the topic: "merge or
+rebase?" Most of them are meaningless. When a DVCS is being used in a
+big team with a big and complex project with many branches there is
+simply no way to avoid merges. So the question's diminished to
+"whether to use rebase, and if yes - when to use rebase?" Considering
+that it is very much recommended not to rebase published commits the
+question's diminished even further: "whether to use rebase on
+non-pushed commits?"
+
+That small question is for the team to decide. The author of the PEP
+recommends to use rebase when pulling, i.e. always do ``git pull
+--rebase`` or even configure automatic setup of rebase for every new
+branch::
+
+ $ git config branch.autosetuprebase true
+
+and configure rebase for existing branches::
+
+ $ git config branch.NAME.rebase true
+
+For example::
+
+ $ git config branch.v2.rebase true
+
+After that ``git pull origin v2`` becomes equivalent to ``git pull
+--rebase origin v2``.
+
+In case when merge is preferred it is recommended to create new
+commits in a separate feature or topic branch while using rebase to
+update the mainline branch. When the topic branch is ready merge it
+into mainline. To avoid a tedious task of resolving conflicts you can
+merge the topic branch to the mainline from time to time and switch
+back to the topic branch to continue working on it. The entire
+workflow would be something like::
+
+ $ git checkout -b issue-42 # create and switch to a new branch
+ ...edit/test/commit...
+ $ git checkout v2
+ $ git pull --rebase origin v2 # update v2 from the upstream
+ $ git merge issue-42
+ $ git branch -d issue-42 # delete the topic branch
+ $ git push origin v2
+
+When the topic branch is deleted only the label is removed, commits
+are stayed in the database, they are now merged into v2::
+
+ o--o--o--o--o--M--< v2 - it is the mainline branch
+ \ /
+ --*--*--* - it is the topic branch, now unnamed
+
+The topic branch is deleted to avoid cluttering branch namespace with
+small topic branches. Information on what issue was fixed or what
+feature was implemented should be in the commit messages.
+
Null-merges
===========