[Rd] Why R should never move to git

Jari Oksanen jari.oksanen at oulu.fi
Thu Jan 25 13:57:18 CET 2018 

This is exactly the instruction given in  https://xkcd.com/1597/

cheers, J.O.

On 25/01/18 14:48, Mario Emmenlauer wrote:
> Hi Duncan!
>
> I think there are many users whose first experiences with git where frustrating,
> and trust me, many people here can relate to your pain. I can certainly say that
> I can. At first, git makes significant effort to become fluent in seemingly
> "simple" tasks. I can literally feel your pain right now.
>
>
> But this is the main downside of git: that it can be hard to learn. I overcame
> this problem by collecting copy-paste-instructions for the most common tasks.
> I think Dirk provided a very nice starting point for a typical pull request, and
> next time you need to use git, maybe try his instructions. They are *exactly* what
> I use at least once a week. However they are not 1:1 for your current situation,
> where you already started a fork.
>
> If you want to solve your current "mess", I personally find the easiest thing to
> move all local changes away (to /tmp/ or wherever), trash the github fork, and
> start over with Dirks instructions. At point (4) you can copy your changed files
> back from /tmp/ and use them for new commits, in this new, clean branch.
>
> Everything else should just work.
>
> Cheers,
>
>      Mario
>
>
>
>
> On 25.01.2018 13:09, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 25/01/2018 6:49 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>>> On 25 January 2018 at 06:20, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>> | On 25/01/2018 2:57 AM, Iñaki Úcar wrote:
>>> | > For what it's worth, this is my workflow:
>>> | >
>>> | > 1. Get a fork.
>>> | > 2. From the master branch, create a new branch called fix-[something].
>>> | > 3. Put together the stuff there, commit, push and open a PR.
>>> | > 4. Checkout master and repeat from 2 to submit another patch.
>>> | >
>>> | > Sometimes, I forget the step of creating the new branch and I put my
>>> | > fix on top of the master branch, which complicates things a bit. But
>>> | > you can always rename your fork's master and pull it again from
>>> | > upstream.
>>> |
>>> | I saw no way to follow your renaming suggestion.  Can you tell me the
>>> | steps it would take?  Remember, there's already a PR from the master
>>> | branch on my fork.  (This is for future reference; I already followed
>>> | Gabor's more complicated instructions and have solved the immediate
>>> | problem.)
>>>
>>> 1)  Via GUI: fork or clone at github so that you have URL to use in 2)
>> Github would not allow me to fork, because I already had a fork of the same repository.  I suppose I could have set up a new user and done it.
>>
>> I don't know if cloning the original would have made a difference. I don't have permission to commit to the original, and the manipulateWidget maintainers
>> wouldn't be able to see my private clone, so I don't see how I could create a PR that they could use.
>>
>> Once again, let me repeat:  this should be an easy thing to do.  So far I'm pretty convinced that it's actually impossible to do it on the Github website
>> without hacks like creating a new user.  It's not trivial but not that difficult for a git expert using command line git.
>>
>> If R Core chose to switch the R sources to use git and used Github to host a copy, problems like mine would come up fairly regularly.  I don't think R Core
>> would gain enough from the switch to compensate for the burden of dealing with these problems.
>>
>> Maybe Gitlab or some other front end would be better.
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>>> 2)  Run
>>>         git clone giturl....
>>>       to fetch local instance
>>>       3)  Run
>>>         git checkout -b feature/new_thing_a
>>>       (this is 2. above by Inaki)
>>>       4)  Edit, save, compile, test, revise, ... leading to 1 or more commits
>>>
>>> 5)  Run
>>>         git push origin
>>>       standard configuration should have remote branch follow local branch, I
>>>       think the "long form" is
>>>         git push --set-upstream origin feature/new_thing_a
>>>
>>> 6)  Run
>>>         git checkout -
>>>       or
>>>         git checkout master
>>>       and you are back in master. Now you can restart at my 3) above for
>>>       branches b, c, d and create independent pull requests
>>>
>>> I find it really to have a bash prompt that shows the branch:
>>>
>>>       edd at rob:~$ cd git/rcpp
>>>       edd at rob:~/git/rcpp(master)$ git checkout -b feature/new_branch_to_show
>>>       Switched to a new branch 'feature/new_branch_to_show'
>>>       edd at rob:~/git/rcpp(feature/new_branch_to_show)$ git checkout -
>>>       Switched to branch 'master'
>>>       Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
>>>       edd at rob:~/git/rcpp(master)$ git branch -d feature/new_branch_to_show
>>>       Deleted branch feature/new_branch_to_show (was 5b25fe62).
>>>       edd at rob:~/git/rcpp(master)$
>>>
>>> There are few tutorials out there about how to do it, I once got mine from
>>> Karthik when we did a Software Carpentry workshop.  Happy to detail off-list,
>>> it adds less than 10 lines to ~/.bashrc.
>>>
>>> Dirk
>>>
>>> |
>>> | Duncan Murdoch
>>> |
>>> | > Iñaki
>>> | >
>>> | >
>>> | >
>>> | > 2018-01-25 0:17 GMT+01:00 Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>:
>>> | >> Lately I've been doing some work with the manipulateWidget package, which
>>> | >> lives on Github at
>>> | >> https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Frte-antares-rpackage%2FmanipulateWidget%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cd46f88a5d3664fd3163f08d563f1ebab%7C9f9ce49a51014aa38c750d5935ad6525%7C0%7C1%7C636524813075970616&sdata=uJhNCEY4egYlpDCkoGy6mI3WRb5PbkgZiBeCDsurxdg%3D&reserved=0.  Last week I
>>> | >> found a bug, so being a good community member, I put together a patch.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> Since the package lives on Github, I followed instructions to put together a
>>> | >> "pull request":
>>> | >>
>>> | >> - I forked the main branch to my own Github account as
>>> | >> <https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fdmurdoch%2FmanipulateWidget&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cd46f88a5d3664fd3163f08d563f1ebab%7C9f9ce49a51014aa38c750d5935ad6525%7C0%7C1%7C636524813075970616&sdata=44irdj5wUdiaOR86LBckjNkHq1QosEZaqIapyXLJw0Q%3D&reserved=0>.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> - I checked out my fork into RStudio.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> - I fixed the bug, and submitted the pull request
>>> | >> <https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Frte-antares-rpackage%2FmanipulateWidget%2Fpull%2F47&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cd46f88a5d3664fd3163f08d563f1ebab%7C9f9ce49a51014aa38c750d5935ad6525%7C0%7C1%7C636524813075970616&sdata=v2iC1pRbfMGg5lWNYiKbbJ6qILU%2FOwn6V9U4pEJx2cs%3D&reserved=0>.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> Then I felt good about myself, and continued on with my work.  Today I
>>> | >> tracked down another bug, unrelated to the previous one.  I know enough
>>> | >> about git to know that I shouldn't commit this fix to my fork, because it
>>> | >> would then become part of the previous pull request.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> So I created a branch within my fork, and committed the change there. But
>>> | >> Github provides no way to create a pull request that only includes the new
>>> | >> stuff!  Every attempt I made would have included everything from both bug
>>> | >> fixes.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> I've read online about creating a new branch based on the master copy, and
>>> | >> "cherry picking" just the final change:  but all the instructions I've tried
>>> | >> so far have failed.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> Okay, I know the solution:  I need to burn the whole thing down (to quote
>>> | >> Jenny Bryan).  I'll just create a new fork, and put the new bug fix in a
>>> | >> branch there.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> I can't!  I don't know if this is a Git restriction or a Github restriction,
>>> | >> but it won't let me create a new fork without deleting the old one.  I don't
>>> | >> know if deleting the previous fork would also delete the previous PR, so I'm
>>> | >> not going to do this.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> This is ridiculous!  It is such an easy concept:  I want to take the diff
>>> | >> between my most recent commit and the one before, and send that diff to the
>>> | >> owners of the master copy.  This should be a trivial (and it is in svn).
>>> | >>
>>> | >> Git and Github allow the most baroque arrangements, but can't do this simple
>>> | >> task.  That's an example of really bad UI design.
>>> | >>
>>> | >> Duncan Murdoch
>>> | >>
>>> | >> ______________________________________________
>>> | >> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> | >> https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstat.ethz.ch%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fr-devel&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cd46f88a5d3664fd3163f08d563f1ebab%7C9f9ce49a51014aa38c750d5935ad6525%7C0%7C1%7C636524813075970616&sdata=4SGKvj20hKYiBbbUjsV8tgItxsjAMYmTtJQX0yr8V%2Bs%3D&reserved=0
>>> | >
>>> | >
>>> | >
>>> |
>>> | ______________________________________________
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>>>
>> ______________________________________________
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>
>
> Viele Gruesse,
>
>      Mario Emmenlauer
>
>
> --
> BioDataAnalysis GmbH, Mario Emmenlauer      Tel. Buero: +49-89-74677203
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