1 =========================================
2 TopGit -- A different patch queue manager
3 =========================================
9 TopGit aims to make handling of large amounts of interdependent topic
10 branches easier. In fact, it is designed especially for the case where
11 you maintain a queue of third-party patches on top of another (perhaps
12 Git-controlled) project and want to easily organize, maintain and submit
13 them -- TopGit achieves that by keeping a separate topic branch for each
14 patch and providing some tools to maintain the branches.
20 See the file ``INSTALL``.
26 The TopGit git repository can be found at <http://repo.or.cz/topgit/pro>.
32 Why not use something like StGIT or Guilt or ``rebase -i`` for maintaining
33 your patch queue? The advantage of these tools is their simplicity;
34 they work with patch *series* and defer to the reflog facility for
35 version control of patches (reordering of patches is not
36 version-controlled at all). But there are several disadvantages -- for
37 one, these tools (especially StGIT) do not actually fit well with plain
38 Git at all: it is basically impossible to take advantage of the index
39 effectively when using StGIT. But more importantly, these tools
40 horribly fail in the face of a distributed environment.
42 TopGit has been designed around three main tenets:
44 (i) TopGit is as thin a layer on top of Git as possible. You
45 still maintain your index and commit using Git; TopGit will only
46 automate a few indispensable tasks.
48 (ii) TopGit is anxious about *keeping* your history. It will
49 never rewrite your history, and all metadata is also tracked
50 by Git, smoothly and non-obnoxiously. It is good to have a
51 *single* point when the history is cleaned up, and that is at
52 the point of inclusion in the upstream project; locally, you
53 can see how your patch has evolved and easily return to older
56 (iii) TopGit is specifically designed to work in a
57 distributed environment. You can have several instances of
58 TopGit-aware repositories and smoothly keep them all
59 up-to-date and transfer your changes between them.
61 As mentioned above, the main intended use-case for TopGit is tracking
62 third-party patches, where each patch is effectively a single topic
63 branch. In order to flexibly accommodate even complex scenarios when
64 you track many patches where many are independent but some depend on
65 others, TopGit ignores the ancient Quilt heritage of patch series and
66 instead allows the patches to freely form graphs (DAGs just like Git
67 history itself, only "one level higher"). For now, you have to manually
68 specify which patches the current one depends on, but TopGit might help
69 you with that in the future in a darcs-like fashion.
71 A glossary plug: The union (i.e. merge) of patch dependencies is called
72 a *base* of the patch (topic branch).
74 Of course, TopGit is perhaps not the right tool for you:
76 (i) TopGit is not complicated, but StGIT et al. are somewhat
77 simpler, conceptually. If you just want to make a linear
78 purely-local patch queue, deferring to StGIT instead might
81 (ii) When using TopGit, your history can get a little hairy
82 over time, especially with all the merges rippling through.
91 ## Create and evolve a topic branch
92 $ tg create t/gitweb/pathinfo-action
93 tg: Automatically marking dependency on master
94 tg: Creating t/gitweb/pathinfo-action base from master...
100 ## Create another topic branch on top of the former one
101 $ tg create t/gitweb/nifty-links
102 tg: Automatically marking dependency on t/gitweb/pathinfo-action
103 tg: Creating t/gitweb/nifty-links base from t/gitweb/pathinfo-action...
107 ## Create another topic branch on top of master and submit
108 ## the resulting patch upstream
109 $ tg create t/revlist/author-fixed master
110 tg: Creating t/revlist/author-fixed base from master...
114 tg: Sent t/revlist/author-fixed
116 To: git@vger.kernel.org
117 Cc: gitster@pobox.com
118 Subject: [PATCH] Fix broken revlist --author when --fixed-string
120 ## Create another topic branch depending on two others non-trivially
121 $ tg create t/whatever t/revlist/author-fixed t/gitweb/nifty-links
122 tg: Creating t/whatever base from t/revlist/author-fixed...
123 tg: Merging t/whatever base with t/gitweb/nifty-links...
125 tg: Please commit merge resolution and call: tg create
126 tg: It is also safe to abort this operation using `git reset --hard`
127 tg: but please remember you are on the base branch now;
128 tg: you will want to switch to a different branch.
132 tg: Resuming t/whatever setup...
136 ## Update a single topic branch and propagate the changes to
138 $ git checkout t/gitweb/nifty-links
141 $ git checkout t/whatever
143 Topic Branch: t/whatever (1 commit)
144 Subject: [PATCH] Whatever patch
146 Depends: t/revlist/author-fixed t/gitweb/nifty-links
148 t/gitweb/nifty-links (1 commit)
150 tg: Updating base with t/gitweb/nifty-links changes...
152 tg: Please commit merge resolution and call `tg update` again.
153 tg: It is also safe to abort this operation using `git reset --hard`,
154 tg: but please remember you are on the base branch now;
155 tg: you will want to switch to a different branch.
159 tg: Updating t/whatever against new base...
161 tg: Please resolve the merge and commit. No need to do anything else.
162 tg: You can abort this operation using `git reset --hard` now
163 tg: and retry this merge later using `tg update`.
167 ## Update a single topic branch and propagate the changes
168 ## further through the dependency chain
169 $ git checkout t/gitweb/pathinfo-action
172 $ git checkout t/whatever
174 Topic Branch: t/whatever (1/2 commits)
175 Subject: [PATCH] Whatever patch
177 Depends: t/revlist/author-fixed t/gitweb/nifty-links
179 t/gitweb/pathinfo-action (<= t/gitweb/nifty-links) (1 commit)
181 tg: Recursing to t/gitweb/nifty-links...
182 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: Updating base with t/gitweb/pathinfo-action changes...
184 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: Please commit merge resolution and call `tg update` again.
185 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: It is also safe to abort this operation using `git reset --hard`,
186 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: but please remember you are on the base branch now;
187 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: you will want to switch to a different branch.
188 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: You are in a subshell. If you abort the merge,
189 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: use `exit` to abort the recursive update altogether.
190 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] $ ..resolve..
191 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] $ git commit
192 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] $ tg update
193 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: Updating t/gitweb/nifty-links against new base...
195 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: Please resolve the merge and commit.
196 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: You can abort this operation using `git reset --hard`.
197 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: You are in a subshell. After you either commit or abort
198 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] tg: your merge, use `exit` to proceed with the recursive update.
199 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] $ ..resolve..
200 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] $ git commit
201 [t/gitweb/nifty-links] $ exit
202 tg: Updating base with t/gitweb/nifty-links changes...
203 tg: Updating t/whatever against new base...
205 ## Clone a TopGit-controlled repository
208 $ tg remote --populate origin
213 ## Add a TopGit remote to a repository and push to it
214 $ git remote add foo URL
218 ## Update from a non-default TopGit remote
226 ``tg [-C <dir>] [-r <remote> | -u] <subcommand> [<subcommand option/argument>...]``
228 -C <dir> Change directory to <dir> before doing anything
229 -r <remote> Pretend ``topgit.remote`` is set to <remote>
230 -u Pretend ``topgit.remote`` is not set
232 The ``tg`` tool has several subcommands:
236 Our sophisticated integrated help facility. Mostly duplicates
241 # to get help for a particular command:
243 # to get help for a particular command in a browser window:
244 $ tg help -w <command>
245 # to get help on TopGit itself
247 # to get help on TopGit itself in a browser
252 Create a new TopGit-controlled topic branch of the given name
253 (required argument) and switch to it. If no dependencies are
254 specified (by extra arguments passed after the first one), the
255 current branch is assumed to be the only dependency.
257 After ``tg create``, you should insert the patch description into
258 the ``.topmsg`` file, which will already contain some prefilled
259 bits. You can set the ``topgit.to``, ``topgit.cc`` and ``topgit.bcc``
260 git configuration variables (see ``man git-config``) in order to
261 have ``tg create`` add these headers with the given default values
264 The main task of ``tg create`` is to set up the topic branch base
265 from the dependencies. This may fail due to merge conflicts.
266 In that case, after you commit the conflict resolution, you
267 should call ``tg create`` again (without any arguments); it will
268 detect that you are on a topic branch base ref and resume the
269 topic branch creation operation.
271 In an alternative use case, if ``-r <branch>`` is given instead of a
272 dependency list, the topic branch is created based on the given
277 Remove a TopGit-controlled topic branch of the given name
278 (required argument). Normally, this command will remove only an
279 empty branch (base == head) without dependendents; use ``-f`` to
280 remove a non-empty branch or a branch that is depended upon by
283 The ``-f`` option is also useful to force removal of a branch's
284 base, if you used ``git branch -D B`` to remove branch B, and then
285 certain TopGit commands complain, because the base of branch B
288 IMPORTANT: Currently, this command will *NOT* remove the branch
289 from the dependency list in other branches. You need to take
290 care of this *manually*. This is even more complicated in
291 combination with ``-f`` -- in that case, you need to manually
292 unmerge the removed branch's changes from the branches depending
295 See also ``tg annihilate``.
297 | TODO: ``-a`` to delete all empty branches, depfix, revert
301 Make a commit on the current TopGit-controlled topic branch
302 that makes it equal to its base, including the presence or
303 absence of .topmsg and .topdeps. Annihilated branches are not
304 displayed by ``tg summary``, so they effectively get out of your
305 way. However, the branch still exists, and ``tg push`` will
306 push it (except if given the ``-a`` option). This way, you can
307 communicate that the branch is no longer wanted.
309 When annihilating a branch that has dependents (i.e. branches
310 that depend on it), those dependents have the dependencies of
311 the branch being annihilated added to them if they do not already
312 have them as dependencies. Essentially the DAG is repaired to
313 skip over the annihilated branch.
315 Normally, this command will remove only an empty branch
316 (base == head, except for changes to the .top* files); use
317 ``-f`` to annihilate a non-empty branch.
321 Change the dependencies of a TopGit-controlled topic branch.
322 This should have several subcommands, but only ``add`` is
325 The ``add`` subcommand takes an argument naming a topic branch to
326 be added, adds it to ``.topdeps``, performs a commit and then
327 updates your topic branch accordingly. If you want to do other
328 things related to the dependency addition, like adjusting
329 ``.topmsg``, prepare them in the index before calling ``tg depend
332 | TODO: Subcommand for removing dependencies, obviously
336 List files changed by the current or specified topic branch.
339 -i list files based on index instead of branch
340 -w list files based on working tree instead of branch
344 Show summary information about the current or specified topic
347 Numbers in parenthesis after a branch name such as "(11/3 commits)"
348 indicate how many commits on the branch (11) and how many of those
349 are non-merge commits (3).
353 Generate a patch from the current or specified topic branch.
354 This means that the diff between the topic branch base and head
355 (latest commit) is shown, appended to the description found in
356 the ``.topmsg`` file.
358 The patch is simply dumped to stdout. In the future, ``tg patch``
359 will be able to automatically send the patches by mail or save
360 them to files. (TODO)
363 -i base patch generation on index instead of branch
364 -w base patch generation on working tree instead of branch
365 --binary pass --binary to ``git diff-tree`` to enable binary patches
369 Send a patch from the current or specified topic branch as
372 Takes the patch given on the command line and emails it out.
373 Destination addresses such as To, Cc and Bcc are taken from the
376 Since it actually boils down to ``git send-email``, please refer
377 to the documentation for that for details on how to setup email
378 for git. You can pass arbitrary options to this command through
379 the ``-s`` parameter, but you must double-quote everything. The
380 ``-r`` parameter with a msgid can be used to generate in-reply-to
381 and reference headers to an earlier mail.
383 WARNING: be careful when using this command. It easily sends
384 out several mails. You might want to run::
386 git config sendemail.confirm always
388 to let ``git send-email`` ask for confirmation before sending any
392 -i base patch generation on index instead of branch
393 -w base patch generation on working tree instead of branch
395 | TODO: ``tg mail patchfile`` to mail an already exported patch
396 | TODO: mailing patch series
397 | TODO: specifying additional options and addresses on command line
401 Register the given remote as TopGit-controlled. This will create
402 the namespace for the remote branch bases and teach ``git fetch``
403 to operate on them. However, from TopGit 0.8 onwards you need to
404 use ``tg push``, or ``git push --mirror``, for pushing
405 TopGit-controlled branches.
407 ``tg remote`` takes an optional remote name argument, and an
408 optional ``--populate`` switch. Use ``--populate`` for your
409 origin-style remotes: it will seed the local topic branch system
410 based on the remote topic branches. ``--populate`` will also make
411 ``tg remote`` automatically fetch the remote, and ``tg update`` look
412 at branches of this remote for updates by default.
414 Using ``--populate`` with a remote name causes the ``topgit.remote``
415 git configuration variable to be set to the given remote name.
419 Show overview of all TopGit-tracked topic branches and their
420 up-to-date status. With a branch name limit output to that branch.
421 Using ``--rdeps`` changes the default from all branches to just the
422 current ``HEAD`` branch but using ``--all`` as the branch name will
423 show ``--rdeps`` for all branches.
426 marks the current topic branch
429 indicates that it introduces no changes of its own
432 indicates respectively whether it is local-only
436 indicates respectively if it is ahead or out-of-date
437 with respect to its remote mate
440 indicates that it is out-of-date with respect to its
444 indicates that it has missing dependencies [even if
445 they are recursive ones]
448 indicates that it is out-of-date with respect to
451 This can take a long time to accurately determine all the
452 relevant information about each branch; you can pass ``-t`` to get
453 just a terse list of topic branch names quickly. Alternately,
454 you can pass ``--graphviz`` to get a dot-suitable output to draw a
455 dependency graph between the topic branches.
457 You can also use the ``--sort`` option to sort the branches using
458 a topological sort. This is especially useful if each
459 TopGit-tracked topic branch depends on a single parent branch,
460 since it will then print the branches in the dependency order.
461 In more complex scenarios, a text graph view would be much more
462 useful, but that has not yet been implemented.
464 The --deps option outputs dependency information between
465 branches in a machine-readable format. Feed this to ``tsort`` to
466 get the output from --sort.
468 The --rdeps option outputs dependency information in an indented
469 text format that clearly shows all the dependencies and their
470 relationships to one another. When --rdeps is given the default is
471 to just display information for HEAD, but that can be changed by using
472 --all as the branch name.
474 Note that the branch name can be specified as ``HEAD`` as a shortcut for
475 the TopGit-controlled branch that ``HEAD`` is a symbolic ref to.
478 -i Use TopGit metadata from the index instead of the branch
479 -w Use TopGit metadata from the working tree instead of the branch
481 | TODO: Speed up by an order of magnitude
482 | TODO: Text graph view
486 Switch to a topic branch. You can use ``git checkout <branch>``
487 to get the same effect, but this command helps you navigate
488 the dependency graph, or allows you to match the topic branch
489 name using a regular expression, so it can be more convenient.
491 There following subcommands are available:
494 Check out a branch that directly
495 depends on your current branch.
498 Check out a branch that this branch
501 ``tg checkout goto <pattern>``
502 Check out a topic branch that
503 matches ``<pattern>``. ``<pattern>``
504 is used as a sed pattern to filter
505 all the topic branches.
508 An alias for ``push``.
510 ``tg checkout child``
511 An alias for ``push``.
514 An alias for ``push``.
517 An alias for ``pop``.
519 ``tg checkout parent``
520 An alias for ``pop``.
523 An alias for ``pop``.
525 If any of the above commands can find more than one possible
526 branch to switch to, you will be presented with the matches
527 and ask to select one of them.
529 The ``<pattern>`` of ``tg checkout goto`` is optional. If you don't
530 supply it, all the available topic branches are listed and you
531 can select one of them.
533 Normally, the ``push`` and ``pop`` commands moves one step in
534 the dependency graph of the topic branches. The ``-a`` option
535 causes them (and their aliases) to move as far as possible.
536 That is, ``tg checkout push -a`` moves to a topic branch that
537 depends (directly or indirectly) on the current branch and
538 that no other branch depends on. ``tg checkout pop -a``
539 moves to a regular branch that the current topic branch
540 depends on (directly or indirectly). If there is more than
541 one possibility, you will be prompted for your selection.
545 Export a tidied-up history of the current topic branch and its
546 dependencies, suitable for feeding upstream. Each topic branch
547 corresponds to a single commit or patch in the cleaned up
548 history (corresponding basically exactly to ``tg patch`` output
549 for the topic branch).
551 The command has three possible outputs now -- either a Git branch
552 with the collapsed history, a Git branch with a linearized
553 history, or a quilt series in new directory.
555 In the case where you are producing collapsed history in a new
556 branch, you can use this collapsed structure either for
557 providing a pull source for upstream, or for further
558 linearization e.g. for creation of a quilt series using git log::
560 git log --pretty=email -p --topo-order origin..exported
562 To better understand the function of ``tg export``, consider this
563 dependency structure::
565 origin/master - t/foo/blue - t/foo/red - master
566 `- t/bar/good <,----------'
567 `- t/baz ------------'
569 (where each of the branches may have a hefty history). Then::
571 master$ tg export for-linus
573 will create this commit structure on the branch ``for-linus``::
575 origin/master - t/foo/blue -. merge - t/foo/red -.. merge - master
576 `- t/bar/good <,-------------------'/
577 `- t/baz ---------------------'
579 In this mode, ``tg export`` works on the current topic branch, and
580 can be called either without an option (in that case,
581 ``--collapse`` is assumed), or with the ``--collapse`` option, and
582 with one mandatory argument: the name of the branch where the
583 exported result will be stored.
585 When using the linearize mode::
587 master$ tg export --linearize for-linus
589 you get a linear history respecting the dependencies of your
590 patches in a new branch ``for-linus``. The result should be more
591 or less the same as using quilt mode and then reimporting it
592 into a Git branch. (More or less because the topological order
593 can usually be extended in more than one way into a total order,
594 and the two methods may choose different ones.) The result
595 might be more appropriate for merging upstream, as it contains
598 Note that you might get conflicts during linearization because
599 the patches are reordered to get a linear history. If linearization
600 would produce conflicts then using ``--quilt`` will also likely result
601 in conflicts when the exported quilt series is applied. Since the
602 ``--quilt`` mode simply runs a series of ``tg patch`` commands to
603 generate the patches in the exported quilt series and those patches
604 will end up being applied linearly, the same conflicts that would be
605 produced by the ``--linearize`` option will then occur at that time.
607 To avoid conflicts produced by ``--linearize`` (or by applying the
608 ``--quilt`` output), use the default ``--collapse`` mode and then use
609 ``git format-patch --topo-order`` on the result to produce
610 conflict-free patches.
612 When using the quilt mode::
614 master$ tg export --quilt for-linus
616 would create the following directory ``for-linus``::
618 for-linus/t/foo/blue.diff
619 for-linus/t/foo/red.diff
620 for-linus/t/bar/good.diff
628 With ``--quilt``, you can also pass the ``-b`` parameter followed
629 by a comma-separated explicit list of branches to export, or
630 the ``--all`` parameter (which can be shortened to ``-a``) to
631 export them all. The ``--binary`` option enables producing Git
632 binary patches. These options are currently only supported
635 In ``--quilt`` mode the patches are named like the originating
636 topgit branch. So usually they end up in subdirectories of the
637 output directory. With the ``--flatten`` option the names are
638 mangled so that they end up directly in the output dir (slashes
639 are substituted by underscores). With the ``--strip[=N]`` option
640 the first ``N`` subdirectories (all if no ``N`` is given) get
641 stripped off. Names are always ``--strip``'d before being
642 ``--flatten``'d. With the option ``--numbered`` (which implies
643 ``--flatten``) the patch names get a number as prefix to allow
644 getting the order without consulting the series file, which
645 eases sending out the patches.
647 | TODO: Make stripping of non-essential headers configurable
648 | TODO: Make stripping of [PATCH] and other prefixes configurable
649 | TODO: ``--mbox`` option to export instead as an mbox file
650 | TODO: support ``--all`` option in other modes of operation
651 | TODO: For quilt exporting, export the linearized history created in
652 a temporary branch--this would allow producing conflict-less
657 Import commits within the given revision range into TopGit,
658 creating one topic branch per commit. The dependencies are set
659 up to form a linear sequence starting on your current branch --
660 or a branch specified by the ``-d`` parameter, if present.
662 The branch names are auto-guessed from the commit messages and
663 prefixed by ``t/`` by default; use ``-p <prefix>`` to specify an
664 alternative prefix (even an empty one).
666 Alternatively, you can use the ``-s NAME`` parameter to specify
667 the name of the target branch; the command will then take one
668 more argument describing a *single* commit to import.
672 Update the current, specified or all topic branches with respect
673 to changes in the branches they depend on and remote branches.
674 This is performed in two phases -- first, changes within the
675 dependencies are merged to the base, then the base is merged
676 into the topic branch. The output will guide you on what to do
677 next in case of conflicts.
679 When ``-a`` is specifed, updates all topic branches matched by
680 ``<pattern>``'s (see ``git-for-each-ref(1)`` for details), or all
681 if no ``<pattern>`` is given. Any topic branches with missing
682 dependencies will be skipped entirely unless ``--skip`` is specified.
684 When ``--skip`` is specifed, an attempt is made to update topic
685 branches with missing dependencies by skipping only the dependencies
686 that are missing. Caveat utilitor
688 After the update, if a single topic branch was specified, it is
689 left as the current one; if ``-a`` was specified, it returns to
690 the branch which was current at the beginning.
692 If your dependencies are not up-to-date, ``tg update`` will first
693 recurse into them and update them.
695 If a remote branch update brings in dependencies on branches
696 that are not yet instantiated locally, you can either bring in
697 all the new branches from the remote using ``tg remote
698 --populate``, or only pick out the missing ones using ``tg create
699 -r`` (``tg summary`` will point out branches with incomplete
700 dependencies by showing an ``!`` next to them).
702 | TODO: ``tg update -a -c`` to autoremove (clean) up-to-date branches
706 If ``-a`` or ``--all`` was specified, pushes all non-annihilated
707 TopGit-controlled topic branches, to a remote repository.
708 Otherwise, pushes the specified topic branches -- or the
709 current branch, if you don't specify which. By default, the
710 remote gets all the dependencies (both TopGit-controlled and
711 non-TopGit-controlled) and bases pushed to it too. If
712 ``--tgish-only`` was specified, only TopGit-controlled
713 dependencies will be pushed, and if ``--no-deps`` was specified,
714 no dependencies at all will be pushed.
716 The ``--dry-run`` and ``--force`` options are passed directly to
717 ``git push`` if given.
719 The remote may be specified with the ``-r`` option. If no remote
720 was specified, the configured default TopGit remote will be
725 Prints the base commit of each of the named topic branches, or
726 the current branch if no branches are named. Prints an error
727 message and exits with exit code 1 if the named branch is not
732 Prints the git log of the named topgit branch -- or the current
733 branch, if you don't specify a name.
735 NOTE: if you have merged changes from a different repository, this
736 command might not list all interesting commits.
740 Outputs the direct dependencies for the current or named branch.
743 -i show dependencies based on index instead of branch
744 -w show dependencies based on working tree instead of branch
748 Outputs all branches which directly depend on the current or
752 -i show dependencies based on index instead of branch
753 -w show dependencies based on working tree instead of branch
761 TopGit stores all the topic branches in the regular ``refs/heads/``
762 namespace (so we recommend distinguishing them with the ``t/`` prefix).
763 Apart from that, TopGit also maintains a set of auxiliary refs in
764 ``refs/top-*``. Currently, only ``refs/top-bases/`` is used, containing the
765 current *base* of the given topic branch -- this is basically a merge of
766 all the branches the topic branch depends on; it is updated during ``tg
767 update`` and then merged to the topic branch, and it is the base of a
768 patch generated from the topic branch by ``tg patch``.
770 All the metadata is tracked within the source tree and history of the
771 topic branch itself, in ``.top*`` files; these files are kept isolated
772 within the topic branches during TopGit-controlled merges and are of
773 course omitted during ``tg patch``. The state of these files in base
774 commits is undefined; look at them only in the topic branches
775 themselves. Currently, two files are defined:
778 Contains the description of the topic branch in a
779 mail-like format, plus the author information, whatever
780 Cc headers you choose or the post-three-dashes message.
781 When mailing out your patch, basically only a few extra
782 mail headers are inserted and then the patch itself is
783 appended. Thus, as your patches evolve, you can record
784 nuances like whether the particular patch should have
785 To-list / Cc-maintainer or vice-versa and similar
786 nuances, if your project is into that. ``From`` is
787 prefilled from your current ``GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT``; other
788 headers can be prefilled from various optional
789 ``topgit.*`` git config options.
792 Contains the one-per-line list of branches this branch
793 depends on, pre-seeded by `tg create`. A (continuously
794 updated) merge of these branches will be the *base* of
797 IMPORTANT: DO NOT EDIT ``.topdeps`` MANUALLY!!! If you do so, you need to
798 know exactly what are you doing, since this file must stay in sync with
799 the Git history information, otherwise very bad things will happen.
801 TopGit also automagically installs a bunch of custom commit-related
802 hooks that will verify whether you are committing the ``.top*`` files in a
803 sane state. It will add the hooks to separate files within the ``hooks/``
804 subdirectory, and merely insert calls to them to the appropriate hooks
805 and make them executable (but will make sure the original hook's code is
806 not called if the hook was not executable beforehand).
808 Another automagically installed piece is a ``.git/info/attributes``
809 specifier for an ``ours`` merge strategy for the files ``.topmsg`` and
810 ``.topdeps``, and the (intuitive) ``ours`` merge strategy definition in
817 There are two remaining issues with accessing topic branches in remote
820 (i) Referring to remote topic branches from your local repository
821 (ii) Developing some of the remote topic branches locally
823 There are two somewhat contradictory design considerations here:
825 (a) Hacking on multiple independent TopGit remotes in a single
827 (b) Having a self-contained topic system in local refs space
829 To us, (a) does not appear to be very convincing, while (b) is quite
830 desirable for ``git-log topic`` etc. working, and increased conceptual
833 Thus, we choose to instantiate all the topic branches of given remote
834 locally; this is performed by ``tg remote --populate``. ``tg update``
835 will also check if a branch can be updated from its corresponding remote
836 branch. The logic needs to be somewhat involved if we are to "do the
837 right thing". First, we update the base, handling the remote branch as
838 if it was the first dependency; thus, conflict resolutions made in the
839 remote branch will be carried over to our local base automagically.
840 Then, the base is merged into the remote branch and the result is merged
841 to the local branch -- again, to carry over remote conflict resolutions.
842 In the future, this order might be adjustable on a per-update basis, in
843 case local changes happen to be diverging more than the remote ones.
845 All commands by default refer to the remote that ``tg remote --populate``
846 was called on the last time (stored in the ``topgit.remote`` git
847 configuration variable). You can manually run any command with a
848 different base remote by passing ``-r REMOTE`` *before* the subcommand
855 The following references are useful to understand the development of
856 topgit and its subcommands.
859 http://lists-archives.org/git/688698-add-list-and-rm-sub-commands-to-tg-depend.html
865 The following software understands TopGit branches:
867 * `magit <http://magit.github.io/>`_ -- a git mode for emacs
869 IMPORTANT: Magit requires its topgit mode to be enabled first, as
870 described in its documentation, in the "Activating extensions"
871 subsection. If this is not done, it will not push TopGit branches
872 correctly, so it's important to enable it even if you plan to mostly use
873 TopGit from the command line.