Git subtree workflow

Question

In my current project I'm using an open source forum ( https://github.com/vanillaforums/Garden ). I was planning on doing something like this :

git remote add vanilla_remote https://github.com/vanillaforums/Garden.git
git checkout -b vanilla vanilla_remote/master
git checkout master
git read-tree --prefix=vanilla -u vanilla

This way I can make change into the vanilla folder (like changing config) and commit it to my master branch and I can also switch into my vanilla branch to fetch updates. My problem is when I try to merge the branch together

git checkout vanilla
git pull
git checkout master
git merge --squash -s subtree --no-commit vanilla
git commit -a -m "update commit"

The problem is that the "update commit" goes on top of my commits and "overwrite" my change. I would rather like to have my commits replay on top of the update. Is there a simple way to do that? I'm not very good in git so maybe this is the wrong approach. Also, I really don't want to mix my history with the vanilla history.

Answer 1

Using

git merge --squash -s subtree --no-commit vanilla

will not "overwrite" your change. I am hoping by "update commit" you mean the commit you did after the subtree merge since it has --no-commit and will not commit by itself.

Answer 2

If you're looking to work with subtrees, you probably want to use git subtree. It provides a somewhat more user-friendly interface to this sort of thing, including merge/pull commands to merge in a subtree (squashing is optional) and split/push commands to split back apart changes to a subtree and send them back to its own repo.

Answer 3

I finished up with this scheme:

1. Work on my development branch touching files from the subtree.

2. Update the subtree branch with squashed development commits:

   git merge -s subtree --squash --no-commit development

3. Update the subtree branch with its remote repository.

4. Update development with squashed subtree commits:

   git merge --squash -s subtree --no-commit subtree

Answer 4

I too am not a git master (see what I did there ;-) ) ... however, I think you may want to look at the rebase command:

http://book.git-scm.com/4_rebasing.html