Working on the Skeleton Repo#
The python3-pip-skeleton repo has a protected main branch and is restricted to rebase PRs only. It is also squashed occasionally so some careful procedures are required.
main#
This branch is what all adopters of the skeleton project merge from so needs to be kept tidy. In particular it must not have any #nnn which would refer to the wrong commit when merged into other repos (and github will see them and add incorrect messages in PRs and Issues). This branch is protected from push and restricted so that it can only be updated by a PR with REBASE.
dev-archive#
This branch to tracks all commits, including those that are squashed out of main. Force push is disallowed on this branch so that it can be kept as a safe record of the history.
Process for making a change#
To make changes. First take a new branch off of main, make your changes and do a pull request to rebase main on the branch.
get a branch on main
git checkout main
git reset –hard origin/main # because main may have been rebased
git checkout -b feature
Do the changes and test in CI with:
git add –all
git commit -m’my changes’
git push -u origin feature
When happy with changes use PR to rebase main on feature.
Next delete feature:
git push origin :feature
git checkout main
git branch -fd feature
Process for squashing main#
Once a year or so tidy up the history of main to make new adoptions easy. Otherwise multiple changes to the same line in the history may cause multiple merge conflicts on that line during re-merge of skeleton into projects that have already adopted.
Perform these steps
Get the dev-archive branch to remember your main commits
git checkout dev-archive
git merge main
If there are conflicts
git checkout –theirs
git add –all
git commit # the commit message will be ‘merged …’ you can add to it if needed
- Now squash main right back to the original ededf000
git checkout main
git reset –hard /origin/main
git rebase -i ededf000
In the rebase edit screen replace all
pickwithsexcept the first one. save and quit
- Now create a handoff branch
git checkout dev-archive
git checkout -b handoff/202x-xx-xx
git merge main
git push -u origin handoff/202x-xx-xx