Git Tips Tricks

Github specific

Github and Pull Requests

Common scenario to run into: you've forked some repo and (or because!) there are outstanding Pull Requests (PRs) created on the upstream project that you want merged into the codebase. This turns out to be relatively easy:

 git clone git@github.com:youruser/project.git
 cd project
 git checkout correctbranchname
 git pull https://github.com/upstreamuser/project.git refs/pull/12/head
 git push origin correctbranchname

This clones your forked copy of "project" locally, checks out whatever branch the PR is against ("correctbranchname"), then does a combination pull+merge on the upstream project's open PR number 12.

See also, a useful discussion about command line access to pull requests: https://gist.github.com/piscisaureus/3342247.

Generic

Filtering repositories

• https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo/ -- github project maintainers say use this instead of built-in 'filter-branch' command.

"promote" subdirectory

Example use of git-filter-repo:

git clone git@gitlab.com:user/bigrepo.git
cd bigrepo
git-filter-repo --path lib/

This keeps history for all files in lib/ and moves it to the top-level.