[Rd] Why R should never move to git

[Duncan Murdoch]

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://github.com/rte-antares-rpackage/manipulateWidget/.  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://github.com/dmurdoch/manipulateWidget>.
> | >>
> | >> - I checked out my fork into RStudio.
> | >>
> | >> - I fixed the bug, and submitted the pull request
> | >> <https://github.com/rte-antares-rpackage/manipulateWidget/pull/47>.
> | >>
> | >> 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://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> | >
> | >
> | >
> |
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