Version Control Tips & Tricks

Nervous of version control? Don’t panic! you’re not on your own. I've put together a run down of some of my tricks and ‘good citizen’ techniques to avoid the worst kinds of conflicts and deal with the remaining ones as efficiently as possible. Branching policies, basic conflict resolution, proactive diffs can all ease the pain of a tricky integration.

Transcript

1. Version Control
   Tips, tricks and good citizenship
   blog.tessbarnes.uk @crataegustess
   Tess Barnes :: October 2015
   

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2. We see a lot of
   this…
   so we have to
   get used to this…
   

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3. But these… lets be honest…
   

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4. Really, really honest…
   

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5. Why do we see so many?
   lots of developers
   lots of overlapping work
   context swapping
   impossible to talk all the time
   we are a bunch of (trainee) php scouts
   

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6. So how do we fix them?
   Photo credit (CC BY 2.0) JD Hancock

   https://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/8755184025
   

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7. Practice bonsai
   cultivate a well shaped tree
   check out at the right level
   branch carefully
   clean up
   photo credit (CC BY-ND 2.0) Beverly Vealach 

   https://www.flickr.com/photos/cowtools/293244244
   

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8. Be prepared
   Know the tools
   Keep a clean working copy - regular cleanup
   Avoid switching - run multiple working copies
   Watch where you leap - check commit logs first
   Communicate, collaborate - be a good citizen
   

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9. Interleaving changes
   how it occurs:
   a file with an old method
   changed by dev a to new method
   changed by dev b to different new method
   dev a commits, dev b updates
   can’t add my block above their block as it would create
   interleaved lines
   

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10. Interleaving changes - fixing
    how to fix:
    copy file.ext.mine to a new location
    accept in diff by ‘use {their} whole file’ & save
    copy in additional new method from .mine file
    

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11. Tree conflicts
    • Watch where you leap!
    • announce big refactors
    • check what others have 

    committed in this area
    • collaborate to get early warning
    • _then_ consider merging
    

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12. Tree conflict - add
    If you’re the second one in:
    1. undo the add
    2. move your file somewhere outside working copy
    3. merge up to your branch / working copy & commit
    4. manually copy changes in
    

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13. Tree conflict - delete
    someone has deleted that nice file you fixed so
    beautifully…
    so find them and talk - it could be just a rename!
    renames can sometimes be solved by patch file
    massive refactors? talk, collaborate, hand copy
    feature removal? don't get frustrated, get coffee
    

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14. Solve with tech (git)
    Switching context? 

    Stash your work in progress
    Separate coding standards changes? 

    Cherry pick your commits in ‘hunks’
    Tree conflicts when adding files?

    No such thing?
    Tree conflicts against deleted files?

    Just choose to delete or re-add
    

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15. photo credit (CC BY-SA 2.0) Sarabbit

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/sarabbit/4549185468
    

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16. Interesting reads
    http://phpboyscout.uk/php-scout/
    http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-guide-to-version-control/
    http://www.makebetterthings.com/tag/subversion/
    http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/index.html
    http://tortoisegit.org/docs/tortoisegit/
    https://git-scm.com/downloads
    http://www.laliluna.de/articles/2012/06/15/when-subversion-fails.html
    

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