Git Workflow Howtos

Contents

How to resolve conflict with master

  • First rebase to most recent master

    # The first two steps can be skipped after you do it once.
    git remote add upstream https://github.com/dmlc/xgboost
    git fetch upstream
    git rebase upstream/master
    
  • The git may show some conflicts it cannot merge, say conflicted.py.

    • Manually modify the file to resolve the conflict.

    • After you resolved the conflict, mark it as resolved by

      git add conflicted.py
      
  • Then you can continue rebase by

    git rebase --continue
    
  • Finally push to your fork, you may need to force push here.

    git push --force
    

How to combine multiple commits into one

Sometimes we want to combine multiple commits, especially when later commits are only fixes to previous ones, to create a PR with set of meaningful commits. You can do it by following steps.

  • Before doing so, configure the default editor of git if you haven’t done so before.

    git config core.editor the-editor-you-like
    
  • Assume we want to merge last 3 commits, type the following commands

    git rebase -i HEAD~3
    
  • It will pop up an text editor. Set the first commit as pick, and change later ones to squash.

  • After you saved the file, it will pop up another text editor to ask you modify the combined commit message.

  • Push the changes to your fork, you need to force push.

    git push --force
    

What is the consequence of force push

The previous two tips requires force push, this is because we altered the path of the commits. It is fine to force push to your own fork, as long as the commits changed are only yours.