Git: more newbie questions

[ninetydegrees]

1) If you're working on bug A on branch A then want to work on completely unrelated bug B on branch B, do you need to stash you changes on A checkout develop then create branch B?

Answer: yes, but see comments about using git commit and git commit --amend in your workflow.

2) When can you use git diff? Before add only? Because otherwise it gives me nothing and I have to use git status -v.

Answer: possibly with git diff --cached or git diff HEAD^ HEAD (untested)

3) Oh I feel so stupid for asking this but how do you get out of git diff or git log on PuTTY? Ctrl+C and Ctrl+X don't work.

Answer: the magic key is 'q' and this is related to PAGER and not PuTTY

4) If you're working on bug A on branch A and have reached a point where you want to do some more work but be easily able to revert to where you were before, what is the best route? Several commits? Creating a subbranch A1 (is that possible?)? Is that where merge is useful? I'm having the hardest time understanding how merge can be used concretely.

Answer: several commits is indeed the best route; the concept of 'subbranches' isn't valid.

5) In git config, is there a way to reset the value of core.editor to whatever is the default on your computer (without naming the editor)?

Answer: yes, with git config --global --unset core.editor

Comments

[dereckson]

(1) This is right. Or you can commit your work on bug A and amend the commit later. My current workflow is something like:

git checkout -b bug/a
#fixing bug A
#oh, I now have to work on B
git commit
git checkout -b bug/b
#fixing bug B
git commit
git checkout bug/a
#fixing bug A (end)
git commit --amend


commit --amend should only use for local changeset, and not on already pushed somewhere else changesets to maintain consistency.

Side note: if you clutter your branch with unmerged changes, for example doing a git pull in A to rebase against master for example, you won't be able to leave A easily. git merge --abort will help.

(2) You can try stuff like git diff --cached or git diff HEAD^ HEAD
(HEAD^ is HEAD minus a version)

(3) This isn't a PuTTY-related question, but a PAGER one.

Some commands are sent to more (or less), softwares to allow to browse up and down contents.

To quit, the key to use is 'q'.

(4) I would do several commits, this produce a clean interface.

You will even be able to merge all these commits into one with git merge when you leave the branch.

By the way, subbranch isn't a valid concept: branches aren't path of codes, but more bookmarks indicating the changesets to work with.

You'll get more information on the concept of branches in the following document:
http://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer-scientists/

(5) I think in this case the default value would be your EDITOR environment variable (echo $EDITOR).

So your question become "how to remove core.editor setting from git config?".

I'm not sure for this one, but I would try git config --unset core.editor.

[ninetydegrees]

Merci beaucoup ! J'aurai sûrement des précisions à te demander plus tard mais il faut le temps que je digère toutes ces nouvelles infos bien utiles. ;)

Back to English:

Re: git config --unset core.editor

I'd tried that actually but it didn't work.

git config

[dereckson]

Mais de rien, c'est un plaisir de pouvoir t'aider si ces informations te sont utiles.

A scope (--global/--system/--local) should probably be added.

To get all the settings:
* git config --global -l
(will read ~/.gitconfig)
* git config --system -l
(system-wide /etc file, if it exists ; in FreeBSD this is /usr/local/etc/gitconfig)
* git config --local -l
(settings for the current repository)

The following test worked fine, with --global:

(doing a change)
/home/dereckson/dev/mediawiki/www ] git commit
(it opens a commit message buffer in nano, following my EDITOR variable)
/home/dereckson/dev/mediawiki/www ] git config --global core.editor vi
/home/dereckson/dev/mediawiki/www ] git commit
(it opens this time the commit message buffer in vi)
/home/dereckson/dev/mediawiki/www ] git config --global --unset core.editor
/home/dereckson/dev/mediawiki/www ] git commit
(back to nano)

Re: git config

[ninetydegrees]

Thank you, thank you! I could check with git var -l that GIT_EDITOR had been reset to the default variable.

[yvi]

Thank you for asking these questions, by the way! I won't have time to do any coding before the weekend, but I will almost certainly run into scenario 1 and 4 at some point :)

[ninetydegrees]

Yay! Yvi coding!
Half the fun for me so far has been making mistakes and trying to figure out how to fix them; sometimes it's ridiculously easier than it used to be and sometimes you have to Google things a bit (also ridiculously easy).

[momijizukamori]

I'm glad you ask these things so I don't have to *g*

[ninetydegrees]

XD

[momijizukamori]

I was wondering similar things, and also clutching mercurial queues close because aaaaah I know that system.

[ninetydegrees]

You know what? I've been using Git for what? Less than a week? and it's so simple and so intuitive I've almost forgotten how I used to do things in Mercurial. Juggling between different things seemed easy on Mercurial because you were used to it but doing it on Git is *actually* easy and so much safer if you remember to stash or commit your changes. You're gonna love it. Also, no more zips or whatever: you can include everything in your patch and the images are displayed on GH.

[denise]

Yeah, I was totally trepidatious about OH NO HUGE NEW THING TO LEARN. then I tried it. NEVER GOING BACK, THANK YOU

[ninetydegrees]

I do love my Windows 7 (first one I bought... ahem) but I imagine this is what it feels like when you switch to a Mac OS.

[foxfirefey]

Hearing you say that you are now having a good experience with this transition relieves me to no end.

[ninetydegrees]

You and fu have been tremendously helpful and I cannot thank you enough for that. <3 <3 <3

[momijizukamori]

Yeah, Dre was mentioning the images thing to me at one point - there was a way to enable git-style patches like that in MQ but I never enababled it.

Guess I'll take the plunge and move my Hack over today *g*