Git collaboration use cases
Ask a collegue for help
Use case: You work together with a group of people on the master branch. You run into a problem, i.e., your local uncommitted work doesn't compile. You need help from your co-workers.
Committing to the master branch is a no-go since that would interfere with the work of others. Of course you can send over the files via mail to your collegues or (already better) use "git format-patch", "git send-email", and "git am" so that others can reproduce your problem, you can also use branches to do the magic.
Solution: Create a new branch, commit your work to that branch, push it to the server. Then ask your collegue by pointing him/her to that branch. You can then work together to resolve the issue by freely committing to this new branch. At the end use "git rebase -i" to tidy up the commits and move them to the master branch.
git checkout -b NEW-BRANCH-NAME
git add FILE1 FILE2 # all problem relevant files
git commit
# In the commit message you should enter the full error description, including
# compiler log messages etc. etc.
git push origin NEW-BRANCH-NAME
Now work with your collegue on that branch to resolve the issue. You are now on branch NEW-BRANCH-NAME and have committed one or more commits to that branch. Of course, you don't want these intermediate commits to make it into the master branch.
git rebase -i master
Experiment a bit with that command, but it will allow you to edit the commit messages, squash several commits together or even edit one of the commits. After you have "beautified" your commits, you can merge them into master.
git checkout master
git merge NEW-BRANCH-NAME
What is my current branch?
Use case: You work with git on the command line and wonder on which branch you currently are.
It's easy enough to find out via
git branch
Look for the little *.
Solution: You should use bash as your standard shell. Use chsh or ypchsh and set the default shell to /bin/bash. If you are a fan of csh or tcsh, then maybe you should read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_shell#Criticism, http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/csh/, http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/, and http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/misc/csh.html.
If you haven't yet installed bash-completion do so.
sudo apt-get install bash-completion git
Then you have to put the following lines into your ~/.bashrc.
source /etc/bash_completion source /etc/bash_completion.d/git PS1="\h:\w"'$(__git_ps1 ":%s")'">"
GIT_PS1_SHOWDIRTYSTATE=true # */+ for dirty
GIT_PS1_SHOWSTASHSTATE=true # $ for stashes
GIT_PS1_SHOWUNTRACKEDFILES=true # % for untracked
Now open up a new terminal and cd into a git repository. You will see something like this (maybe not that colorful): http://www.seejohncode.com/2012/05/01/git-bash-completion-and-detail/
Also note that from now on you can press TAB to complete a git command.