We're using GitLab for our project and we think it's great.
We're also using git flow to manage the changes in feature, develop, master branches.
Can you use the Merge Request build in GitLab to manage the branches in git flow style?
Meaning when accepting a Merge Request for a release branch, it will merge the release branch into master AND into develop..
Or should we always use git flow on our local machines to accept the Merge Requests.
Like this issue 1628 illustrates, it is best to use GitLab to publish (push) branches, then to rely on a specific GitLab feature related to a particular workflow like git-flow.
So the natural approach is to limit those git-flow features to the local clones, and push any branch you want to GitLab once the merge request is resolved.
By now, there is something called GitLab Flow, "a clearly defined set of best practices".
Cited from the linked source:
It combines feature-driven development and feature branches with issue
tracking.
Related
I am using Azure Devops in an IT environment with many different development teams and git repositories. Each development team owns one or more repositories. It's my job to work on various application components contained in said repositories. Because I do not own those repositories, I should not make any changes in build/release pipelines, build policies etc, all by myself because that can impact other people's work.
Now let's say I have a feature branch named UpgradedFeature in the repository FeatureRepository, containing my changes. Said changes also introduce a breaking change in the build pipeline used for that repository for the master branch. Let's say that pipeline is named MasterBuildPipeline.
So in order for my build based on the branch UpgradedFeature to succeed and not impact other people's work, I make a clone of the MasterBuildPipeline, name it UpgradedFeatureBuildPipeline and configure the breaking changes. This new build pipeline is used exclusively by me for the UpgradedFeature branch only.
The build, now using the new UpgradedFeatureBuildPipeline pipeline succeeds and now I want to merge into master , so I make a pull request to merge the changes contained in UpgradedFeature into master. The master branch has a branch policy in place named MasterBranchPolicy like described on https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/branch-policies?view=azure-devops&tabs=browser. This branch policy contains the MasterBuildPipeline and prevents completion of that pull request when the build using that pipeline does not succeed.
So my problem is that my pull request triggers the MasterBranchPolicy containing the MasterBuildPipeline and not the UpgradedFeatureBuildPipeline containing the necessary breaking changes for the build to succeed. So the build fails and I cannot complete the pull request.
Of course I could edit the MasterBuildPipeline for a short time, introduce my breaking changes, run the build, then discard the breaking changes again. But there's a chance I may impact other people's work with that and somehow I have a feeling that's not the right approach. I could also edit or disable the MasterBranchPolicy for a short time but again, I may impact other people's work and I feel it's not the right approach.
How should I do this?
So the build fails and I cannot complete the pull request.
To complete the pull request even through the build fails, you could grant yourself Bypass permissions. Bypass permissions let you complete pull requests that don't satisfy branch policies. You can grant bypass permissions to yourself then complete the pull request. Here is Bypass branch policies for reference.
Please navigate to Project setting >> Repositories >> The repo >> Security >> user (yourself) >> Bypass policies when completing pull requests.
Then, you can Override branch policies and enable merge even the MasterBuildPipeline faild.
Please also note that use caution when granting the ability to bypass policies, especially at the repo and project levels. Policies are a cornerstone of secure and compliant source code management. In your scenario, it's suggested to edit the MasterBuildPipeline and the MasterBranchPolicy or disable the MasterBranchPolicy as you mentioned.
Generally, workflow of DevOps Branching Strategy as follows
Developer will create a feature or bugfix branch out of develop. One feature or bugfix branch usually stands for one JIRA bug or feature item. These branches are personal
The changes will be pushed into the developer's feature or bugfix branch.
When the new feature or bugfix is complete.A developer will create a pull request. Pull requests open a code review phase.
Once a pull request has been approved, the team lead or development team will move it into development.
When the development branch has all the epics and bug fixes, i.e., the content planned for the next release, the development team or team lead will create a release branch. This initiates the release regression testing phase.At this stage, only bug fixes are accepted for release, and the workflow is similar to that of the development branch.
Having a separate release branch will enable future development towards the next release in the development branch. Features for the next release are not included in this release. However, bug fixes for this release will be incorporated into the development of the next release as well.
When release content meets the criteria, the release branch will be frozen, which means that it ends. Content from releases will be merged to master and tagged there. For the next release, a new release branch is created when needed.
As per my experience, I would suggest creating branching policies like
A pull request is requested to merge the develop, release, and master branches.
Pull request approvers should be leads.
All developers can create feature branches.
All developers can push to hotfix and feature branches. Commit messages must include the JIRA issue id.
For example, if the dev branch is behind the build branch when the two branches merge, the merge request can be created. But it is clear that it cannot merge because it is not possible to merge a backward branch into the current branch. In this case, I want to use the.gitlab-ci.yml configuration, To determine if the dev branch is behind the build branch, I wonder, can this be done? How to configure the.gitlab-ci.yml file if possible?
Basically, gitlab attempts the merge using git to determine if there's a conflict. It actually calls to gitaly to do this.
Basically the process goes like this:
The rails app in repository.rb will call to the gitaly conflict service to check for conclicts
The conflict service list_conflict_file in gitaly will call to git2go
The git2go conflicts subcommand will basically perform the git merge operation and return any conflicts that were encountered. This eventually makes its way back as a response to the call from rails in step (1)
So, if you wanted to do something similar in your CI/CD pipeline, you could use git (or a programatic API to git in your favorite language) to attempt a local merge of the two branches in order to detect conflicts.
We have two developers using the same ADF. Each developer creates a git branch and starts working on it. Each developer can save the changes to their own git branch but there can only be one collaboration branch and this branch decides the publishing branch. This is causing a blockade (for one of the developer. How can we solve this ?
ADF publish branch can be set using a publish_config.json but now there is an option to set this in the adf itself. which one takes precedence? What is the best practice here?
You need to manage the work of each developer with standard git branch/merge processes. When one dev is done with work in their feature branch, then they will create a pull request to merge changes into your collaboration branch.
If the second dev has not created a feature branch yet, they can just do so after the pull request from the first dev is complete and then continue work from there. If the second dev has already created a feature branch, then they will need to merge the new changes from the collaboration branch into their feature branch to continue work before later committing to git and creating a pull request to merge changes from their feature branch back into the collaboration branch. From there, you can publish as needed.
This git work can be done through the ADF editor as well as through any other git interface you have. It's up to you.
This article discusses the process in specific detail using the ADF editor.
EDIT:
I believe you now have answers for this from 3 of the other 5 questions you posted about this same topic in the past day.
ADF publish confusion in git mode
Azure data factory working-branch confusion
When ADF publish branch is git protected how to publish?
Here is another article which describes the fundamental git process for ADF to help bring you up to speed with the fundamentals of how the different branches work, and how you can switch publish branches on the fly if needed.
My requirement is whenever developer try to do check-in existing GitLab repository then before doing check-in in repository,build should trigger (Jenkins build) and Junit test case should run on new check-in and if passes then it should go forward and will allow developer to do check-in in main repository.
I am not sure but is pre-hook commit can achieve this requirement?
While you could achieve this with pre-commit hooks, it's more common to do so with post-commit hooks on the server-side.
You can achieve this by operating a branch based workflow, there are multiple to choose from - I would recommend reading through this guidance by Atlassian.
Developers will create branches from a 'main' branch (often master, but can be a 'dev' branch working towards a release for instance), then develop code on that branch. They will then push their branch and commits to the remote repository (GitLab). When ready to merge into the main branch, your developers can open a merge request onto the main branch.
On GitLab you can setup a webhook to trigger Jenkins builds when a push event occurs. I would recommend this guide to guide you through it.
In the GitLab project settings you can require a passing build before merge requests are allowed to merge.
Furthermore, your understanding of Git seems incorrect - check in is not a term used in Git. Please take a look at the Git documentation. In Git a developer creates commits against a local copy of the repository, then pushes these to a remote repository (GitLab/GitHub etc.). There is no direct equivalent of the 'check in' used in various centralised version control systems e.g. SVN.
It is ok to push to gitlab repositories directly, from outside gitlab?
Mainly what I would like to know is:
* would gitlab detect changes?
* is is safe, as in if it will not break repos due to concurrency?
If I understand your question correctly you're asking whether it is possible to push commits from another git client than Gitlab to a Gitlab instance.
There's no problem at all concerning this, actually this is exactly what git and Gitlab is about.
It doesn't matter at all which Git client you use to get your commits done and pushed to the server running Gitlab. Think of Gitlab as just one possible frontend to your repositories.
If you are interested in the technical background:
Git is completely file-based and doesn't rely on any kind of central server managing your repositories. All relevant data is stored in the .git subdirectory of your project. This enables the use of multiple clients with a single repository - for example git and Gitlab.
Gitlab internally uses the gem gitlab_git which itself uses the library rugged that provides Ruby bindings for libgit2. That library is also used in the implementation of other git clients, "including the GitHub.com site, in Plastic SCM and also powering Microsoft's Visual Studio tools for Git".
Regarding the handling of actual concurrency problems, have a look at this answer by kan. Correct permissions are handled via git hooks as was kindly pointed towards in this comment below by Ciro Santilli.