From: Oleg Broytman <phd@phdru.name>
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2015 22:15:33 +0000 (+0300)
Subject: Fill section "Merge or rebase?"
X-Git-Url: https://git.phdru.name/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=3464b8a43624f0a795e7a0b2908304cd4a661a70;p=git-wiki.git

Fill section "Merge or rebase?"
---

diff --git a/pep-git.txt b/pep-git.txt
index 1657263..a9b4d9e 100644
--- a/pep-git.txt
+++ b/pep-git.txt
@@ -383,6 +383,56 @@ https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/howto/revert-a-faulty-merge.html
 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 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
+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
+
+After that ``git pull origin v2`` will be 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--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
 ===========