GitBestPractices

Open MPI Git Best Practices

For a nice, relatively brief overview of Git's basic usage, please see the Pro Git book by Scott Chacon, available for free online. If you want to understand the nitty-gritty, check out Git From the Bottom Up.

Otherwise, here are a list of typical "dos" and "don'ts" for Git, some with a specific eye towards Open MPI:

Do

• make smaller, logically self-contained commits
• write nice commit messages, with a concise subject line and a useful description of what change is being made and why
• If you think you screwed up a repository (yours or a shared one), STOP and ask for help on devel@open-mpi.org. Many Git operations are reversible if you don't take too many steps in the wrong direction.
• run git gc on your repository periodically, it will speed up many operations and shrink the space consumed on disk by your .git directory

Don't

• change published history
• change published history!
• delete or rename published tags, this is a real pain to unwind
• make large rambling commits that intermix multiple unrelated changes
• make unnecessary whitespace changes in the same commit where you are changing logic
• commit any large binaries to the repository, this will rapidly increase the storage space required for everybody's clones
• use git filter-branch unless you really know what you are doing, and especially don't use it on published history