Git Workflow

The general process for working with Polly is:

1. Fork on GitHub
2. Clone your fork locally
3. Configure the upstream repo (git remote add upstream git://github.com/App-vNext/Polly)
4. Create a local branch (git checkout -b myBranch)
5. Work on your feature
6. Rebase if required (see below)
7. Push the branch up to GitHub (git push origin myBranch)
8. Send a Pull Request on GitHub

You should never work on a clone of master, and you should never send a pull request from master - always from a branch. The reasons for this are detailed below.

Basic Git workflow

For an introduction to Git, check out GitHub Guides. For more information about GitHub Flow, please head over to the Understanding the GitHub Flow illustrated guide, both by the awesome people at GitHub.

Handling Updates from Upstream/Master

While you're working away in your branch it's quite possible that your upstream master may be updated. If this happens you should:

1. Stash any un-committed changes you need to
2. git checkout master
3. git pull upstream master
4. git rebase master myBranch
5. git push origin master - (optional) this this makes sure your remote master is up to date

This ensures that your history is "clean" i.e. you have one branch off from master followed by your changes in a straight line. Failing to do this ends up with several "messy" merges in your history, which we don't want. This is the reason why you should always work in a branch and you should never be working in, or sending pull requests from, master.

Rebasing public commits is pure evil, which is why we require you to rebase any updates from upstream/master.

If you're working on a long running feature then you may want to do this quite often, rather than run the risk of potential merge issues further down the line.

Sending a Pull Request

While working on your feature you may well create several branches, which is fine, but before you send a pull request you should ensure that you have rebased back to a single "Feature branch" - we care about your commits, and we care about your feature branch; but we don't care about how many or which branches you created while you were working on it :-)

When you're ready to go you should confirm that you are up to date and rebased with upstream/master (see "Handling Updates from Upstream/Master" above), and then:

1. git push origin myBranch
2. Send a descriptive Pull Request on GitHub - making sure you have selected the correct branch in the GitHub UI!

For more information on the merits of this workflow please see RobertTheGrey's excellent post on the Fubu MVC Development Group.