How Git helps you to keep your FluxBB board up-to-date
After our recent switch from SVN to Git, we heard some voices complaining about Git and how it supposedly makes life harder for owners of heavily modified boards. I will try to show that this is not true in this post.
Git’s branching and merging capabilites are an enormous improvement when comparing them to SVN. Programming in branches is encouraged in Git. Developing your own code under version control, while easily importing (“merging”) changes from the FluxBB repository – does that not sound like a huge improvement?
So, the workflow – how I envision it – goes like this:
- You clone the official FluxBB repository at git://github.com/fluxbb/fluxbb.git
- You create a branch off the master branch:
git checkout -b mybranch master - You apply all your modifications (preferably in multiple commits)
- When there are changes in the master branch that you would like to implement, you just merge them into your branch:
git pull origin master
Note: I suggest that you use a graphical Git client like SmartGit on Windows or gitk or giggle on Linux. Especially when new to Git, that may make several things easier for you.
Granted, “just merging” might prove a little more difficult, due to possible conflicts between your changes and the ones in the official repository. And that’s where graphical Git client can prove even more helpful. If they have built-in conflict solvers and if you know PHP well enough to understand the changes both made in core and in your branch, you should be able to solve these conflicts easily. All the other changes are made automatically by Git, just leaving the more complex cases up to your human decision.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jamie Furness, FluxBB and Frank Smit, Franz. Franz said: How Git helps you to keep your FluxBB board up-to-date http://is.gd/c39O8 [...]