A collection of Git extensions to provide high-level repository operations for Vincent Driessen's branching model.
The easiest way to install git-flow is using Rick Osborne's excellent git-flow installer, which can be run using the following command:
$ wget -q -O - http://github.com/nvie/gitflow/raw/develop/contrib/gitflow-installer.sh | sudo sh
For OSX users, the wget command isn't available by default, but curl is, so you can run:
$ curl http://github.com/nvie/gitflow/raw/develop/contrib/gitflow-installer.sh | sudo sh
For Windows users who wish to use the automated install, it is suggested that you install Cygwin first to install tools like sh and wget. Then simply follow the command:
c:\Users\<user> wget -q -O - http://github.com/nvie/gitflow/raw/develop/contrib/gitflow-installer.sh | sh
If you prefer a manual installation, please use the following instructions. After downloading the sources from Github, also fetch the submodules:
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
Then, you can install git-flow, using:
$ sudo make install
By default, git-flow will be installed in /usr/local. To change the prefix where git-flow will be installed, simply specify it explicitly, using:
$ sudo make prefix=/opt/local install
Or simply point your PATH environment variable to your git-flow checkout
directory.
Installation note:
git-flow depends on the availability of the command line utility getopt,
which may not be available in your Unix/Linux environment. Please use your
favorite package manager to install getopt. For Cygwin, install the
util-linux package to get getopt. If you use apt-get as your install
manager, the package name is opt.
For those who use the Bash or ZSH shell, please check out the excellent work on the git-flow-completion project by bobthecow. It offers tab-completion for all git-flow subcommands and branch names.
For Windows users, msysgit is a good starting place for installing git.
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Can I still do manual branches and merges when I use git-flow?
Of course you can.git-flowdoes not forbid you to keep using vanilla Git commands!So if you want to merge
masterintodevelopfor whatever reason you want to, you can safely do so without breakinggit-flowcompatibility. Do you want to manually merge a feature branch X into another feature branch Y? Not a problem. As long as you do it conciously and realize what this means for finishing those branches later on. -
Why does git-describe not work for me?
When finishing release and hotfix branches, that branch's HEAD is first merged intomasterand then intodevelop. It is not the resulting new merge commit frommasterthat is merged back intodevelop. This means that a linear path from the newdevelopbranch to the newmastercommit is not created. Even worse, a linear path is created from the newdevelopbranch to the previousmastercommit. Although unintended, this is simply an effect of using the current branching rules.When using
git-describein these cases, you can get very confusing and misleading results, sincegit-describescans the current commits linear history for the most recent tag it finds, which will always be the previous tag.I will change this behaviour in the next version of the branching model explicitly and I will include this behavioural change in the first version of the Python rewrite.
For more references to this problem, see:
- Issue #49
- These two discussions on the git-flow-users mailinglist.
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I'm getting errors when I use flags with git-flow!
git-flowuses the shFlags library to provide platform independent flag parsing (using wichever low-level flag parsing libraries likegetoptorgetoptsare available). However,shFlagsdoes not work too well on a few platforms that haven't been tested originally. This results in errors like this:flags:WARN getopt: option invalide -- 'f' -- 'init' flags:FATAL unable to parse provided options with getoptThe platforms that suffer these errors include:
- Gentoo
- Ubuntu
- Redhat Enterprise Linux
There are open issues related to this: #28 and #39. Unfortunately, there is no simple fix for it and all hope is placed on the Python rewrite of
git-flow, see issue #33. -
Can I use it with Windows?
There have been reports of Windows users usinggit-flow.Unfortunately, I have no Windows environment to test it on, but this issue should be helpful in setting it up.
This project is still under development. Feedback and suggestions are very welcome and I encourage you to use the Issues list on Github to provide that feedback.
Feel free to fork this repo and to commit your additions. For a list of all contributors, please see the AUTHORS file.
Any questions, tips, or general discussion can be posted to our Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/gitflow-users
git-flow is published under the liberal terms of the BSD License, see the LICENSE file. Although the BSD License does not require you to share any modifications you make to the source code, you are very much encouraged and invited to contribute back your modifications to the community, preferably in a Github fork, of course.
For the best introduction to get started to git flow, please read Jeff
Kreeftmeijer's blog post:
http://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/2010/why-arent-you-using-git-flow/
To initialize a new repo with the basic branch structure, use:
git flow init
This will then interactively prompt you with some questions on which branches you would like to use as development and production branches, and how you would like your prefixes be named. You may simply press Return on any of those questions to accept the (sane) default suggestions.
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To list/start/finish feature branches, use:
git flow feature git flow feature start <name> [<base>] git flow feature finish <name>For feature branches, the
<base>arg must be a commit ondevelop. -
To list/start/finish release branches, use:
git flow release git flow release start <release> [<base>] git flow release finish <release>For release branches, the
<base>arg must be a commit ondevelop. -
To list/start/finish hotfix branches, use:
git flow hotfix git flow hotfix start <release> [<base>] git flow hotfix finish <release>For hotfix branches, the
<base>arg must be a commit onmaster. -
To list/start support branches, use:
git flow support git flow support start <release> <base>For support branches, the
<base>arg must be a commit onmaster.
A few people already requested it, so now it's here: a Flattr button.
Of course, the best way to show your appreciation for the original blog post or the git-flow tool itself remains contributing to the community. If you'd like to show your appreciation in another way, however, consider Flattr'ing me:
