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git-depbranch

Easily manage inter-branch dependencies in Git.

Introduction

When working with a Git repository, a developer may face two conflicting pressures. On the one hand, it is extremely convenient to put all of your work into a single Git branch. This way, the user does not need to worry about which branch a new feature that she is developing may need to go into. However, putting many code changes into a single branch often makes code review hard, if not impossible. Additionally, separating features with interdependencies into different branches creates a new complexity: each branch needs to be based off of a commit which contains all of the dependencies required by the feature. Often, what happens to me is that I end up writing a bunch of git commands chained together on the command line to make a commit in a specific branch and merge them all together in the right order to make sure all of my downstream features have the fix.

Instead of dealing with this mess manually, this whole process should be automated. In particular:

  • It should be easy to specify and review which branches the current branch depends on.
  • It should be easy to generate a base branch upon which the current branch is based for the purpose of code review.
  • It should be easy to update the base branch if any changes have happened to it.

Installation

Run lein bin and add the executable in target/base+system+user+dev/git-depbranch to your path.

Usage

Command Explanation
git depbranch show [--recursive] [branchname] Show all of the branches that the current branch is dependent on, recursively if specified.
git depbranch add <branchname> Add as a dependent branch for the current branch.
git depbranch remove <branchname> Remove as a dependent branch for the current branch.
git depbranch base-branch Print the name of the base branch for the current branch.
git depbranch update-base Creates a base branch for the current branch, and recursively updates it by traversing the branch dependency tree.

Examples

One branch depends on another

In this example, suppose that we have branches a and b, where a depends on b.

$ git checkout a
Switched to branch 'a'
$ git depbranch show          # empty result
$ git depbranch add b
$ git depbranch show
b
$ git checkout b
Switched to branch 'b'

... make some changes and commit ...

$ git checkout a
$ git depbranch update-base   # resets 'a_db_base' to 'b' and merges into 'a'

Now, suppose we add a new feature upon which a depends, called c.

$ git checkout 'a'
Switched to branch 'a'
$ git depbranch add 'c'
$ git depbranch show a
b
c
$ git depbranch update-base   # merges 'b' and 'c' into 'a_db_base', then merges
                              # 'a_db_base' into 'a'.

Bugs

  • Currently, the base branch into which dependent branches are merged is always called <branchname>_db_base. This should be configurable per branch.
  • There is no validation that you are not adding a branch which does not exist.

License

Copyright © 2017 Miles Yucht

Distributed under the MIT License.