Core development / Related HOWTOs / Useful git commands

Note: You are currently reading the documentation for Bolt 4.0. Looking for the documentation for Bolt 5.2 instead?

This HOWTO is aimed at people doing development, or debugging, of Bolt.

They are not recommended as installation guides especially for production environments.

WARNING: Always make backups!

Assumptions¶

This HOWTO makes the following assumptions throughout

• Bolt's main repository remote is called "upstream"
• Your personal fork of the bolt/bolt repository remote is called "origin"
• X.Y notation is used to refer the semantic versioning of "minor" and "patch" release numbers.

Cloning Bolt¶

To clone the main Bolt repository, simply clone and name the remote repository.

mkdir /my/bolt/clone/directory
cd /my/bolt/clone/directory
# Note the dot at the end of the next line!
git clone https://github.com/bolt/bolt.git .
git remote rename origin upstream

You can now get changes for Bolt's main repository by simply pulling the branch your are tracking.

Following (tracking) a new branch¶

Tracking a (pre-)release branch is done by minor and patch numbers.

git fetch upstream
git checkout -b X.Y upstream/X.Y

Firstly, this does a "fetch" of Bolt's main repository, meaning it retrieves the changes to git's database and updates its internal knowledge of upstream's branches, without applying them to your local branches.

The second command will then create the branch X.Y as-at the current git HEAD commit on upstream's X.Ybranch.

What branch am I on?¶

A useful trick to keep in mind, to identify the branch you are on, you can use the git branch command.

It will output a list of your local branches, with the active (current) one prefixed with a *.

  feature/world-peace
  hotfix/issue-1555
  master
  2.2
  3.0
* 3.1
  3.2

Setting your Bolt fork as a remote¶

git remote add origin https://github.com/YourName/bolt.git

What remote repositories am I connected to?¶

git remote -v

Will show output similar to:

origin      git@github.com:YourName/bolt.git (fetch)
origin      git@github.com:YourName/bolt.git (push)
upstream    https://github.com/bolt/bolt.git (fetch)
upstream    https://github.com/bolt/bolt.git (push)

Change status of current branch¶

To determine if your currently checked out git branch has uncommitted changes, git status is your friend.

Always keep this command in regular use.

If nothing has change the output will be similar to:

On branch hotfix/issue-1555
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/hotfix/issue-1555'.
nothing to commit, working directory clean

Switching branches¶

git checkout X.Y

Updating a tracked branch¶

git pull

Updating a un-tracked branch from Bolt¶

git pull upstream X.Y

Updating master branch from Bolt's master¶

git checkout master
git pull upstream master

Showing the changes to the current branch¶

These assume that you created the current branch from the starting point of X.Y branch.

Not that changes that have been pulled into the local branch your are comparing will also show.

Log entries¶

To see an abbreviated list, or one commit per-line:

git log --oneline X.Y..HEAD

Omitting the --oneline provides more verbose change logs.

File(s) that change¶

git diff --stat X.Y..HEAD

Will give some output similar to:

 src/Application.php         |  6 +-----
 src/Controller/Frontend.php | 11 ++++++++++-
 src/Stack.php               | 18 ++++++++++++------

Removing the --stat will show the summary of differences to lines.