Using git to develop Libav

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

This document aims in giving some quick references on a set of useful git commands. You should always use the extensive and detailed documentation provided directly by git:

git --help
man git

shows you the available subcommands,

git <command> --help
man git-<command>

shows information about the subcommand <command>.

Additional information could be found on the Git Reference website

For more information about the Git project, visit the

Git website

Consult these resources whenever you have problems, they are quite exhaustive.

What follows now is a basic introduction to Git and some Libav-specific guidelines to ease the contribution to the project

2. Basics Usage

2.1 Get GIT

You can get git from http://git-scm.com/ Most distribution and operating system provide a package for it.

2.2 Cloning the source tree

git clone git://git.libav.org/libav.git <target>

This will put the Libav sources into the directory <target>.

git clone git@git.libav.org:libav.git <target>

This will put the Libav sources into the directory <target> and let you push back your changes to the remote repository.

2.3 Updating the source tree to the latest revision

git pull (--rebase)

pulls in the latest changes from the tracked branch. The tracked branch can be remote. By default the master branch tracks the branch master in the remote origin.

2.4 Rebasing your local branches

git pull --rebase

fetches the changes from the main repository and replays your local commits over it. This is required to keep all your local changes at the top of Libav’s master tree. The master tree will reject pushes with merge commits.

2.5 Adding/removing files/directories

git add [-A] <filename/dirname>
git rm [-r] <filename/dirname>

GIT needs to get notified of all changes you make to your working directory that makes files appear or disappear. Line moves across files are automatically tracked.

2.6 Showing modifications

git diff <filename(s)>

will show all local modifications in your working directory as unified diff.

2.7 Inspecting the changelog

git log <filename(s)>

You may also use the graphical tools like gitview or gitk or the web interface available at http://git.libav.org/

2.8 Checking source tree status

git status

detects all the changes you made and lists what actions will be taken in case of a commit (additions, modifications, deletions, etc.).

2.9 Committing

git diff --check

to double check your changes before committing them to avoid trouble later on. All experienced developers do this on each and every commit, no matter how small. Every one of them has been saved from looking like a fool by this many times. It’s very easy for stray debug output or cosmetic modifications to slip in, please avoid problems through this extra level of scrutiny.

For cosmetics-only commits you should get (almost) empty output from

git diff -w -b <filename(s)>

Also check the output of

git status

to make sure you don’t have untracked files or deletions.

git add [-i|-p|-A] <filenames/dirnames>

Make sure you have told git your name and email address

git config --global user.name "My Name"
git config --global user.email my@email.invalid

Use –global to set the global configuration for all your git checkouts.

Git will select the changes to the files for commit. Optionally you can use the interactive or the patch mode to select hunk by hunk what should be added to the commit.

git commit

Git will commit the selected changes to your current local branch.

You will be prompted for a log message in an editor, which is either set in your personal configuration file through

git config --global core.editor

or set by one of the following environment variables: GIT_EDITOR, VISUAL or EDITOR.

Log messages should be concise but descriptive. Explain why you made a change, what you did will be obvious from the changes themselves most of the time. Saying just "bug fix" or "10l" is bad. Remember that people of varying skill levels look at and educate themselves while reading through your code. Don’t include filenames in log messages, Git provides that information.

Possibly make the commit message have a terse, descriptive first line, an empty line and then a full description. The first line will be used to name the patch by git format-patch.

2.10 Preparing a patchset

git format-patch <commit> [-o directory]

will generate a set of patches for each commit between <commit> and current HEAD. E.g.

git format-patch origin/master

will generate patches for all commits on current branch which are not present in upstream. A useful shortcut is also

git format-patch -n

which will generate patches from last n commits. By default the patches are created in the current directory.

2.11 Sending patches for review

git send-email <commit list|directory>

will send the patches created by git format-patch or directly generates them. All the email fields can be configured in the global/local configuration or overridden by command line. Note that this tool must often be installed separately (e.g. git-email package on Debian-based distros).

2.12 Renaming/moving/copying files or contents of files

Git automatically tracks such changes, making those normal commits.

mv/cp path/file otherpath/otherfile
git add [-A] .
git commit

3. Libav specific

3.1 Reverting broken commits

git reset <commit>

git reset will uncommit the changes till <commit> rewriting the current branch history.

git commit --amend

allows to amend the last commit details quickly.

git rebase -i origin/master

will replay local commits over the main repository allowing to edit, merge or remove some of them in the process.

git revert <commit>

git revert will generate a revert commit. This will not make the faulty commit disappear from the history.

3.2 Pushing changes to remote trees

git push

Will push the changes to the default remote (origin). Git will prevent you from pushing changes if the local and remote trees are out of sync. Refer to and to sync the local tree.

git remote add <name> <url>

Will add additional remote with a name reference, it is useful if you want to push your local branch for review on a remote host.

git push <remote> <refspec>

Will push the changes to the <remote> repository. Omitting <refspec> makes git push update all the remote branches matching the local ones.

3.3 Finding a specific svn revision

Since version 1.7.1 git supports :/foo syntax for specifying commits based on a regular expression. see man gitrevisions

git show :/'as revision 23456'

will show the svn changeset r23456. With older git versions searching in the git log output is the easiest option (especially if a pager with search capabilities is used). This commit can be checked out with

git checkout -b svn_23456 :/'as revision 23456'

or for git < 1.7.1 with

git checkout -b svn_23456 $SHA1

where $SHA1 is the commit hash from the git log output.

4. Server Issues

Contact the project admins git@libav.org if you have technical problems with the GIT server.