[gmx-developers] creating a new branch in the main repository?

[Szilárd Páll]

Hi,

I thought, those branches on the main git.gromacs.org are supposed to
be long-term feature branches that are aimed at merging in the future,
but I could be wrong.

However, hosting non-gerrit feature branches on gromacs.org is
something I support too!

At some point in the past we discussed the question of keeping medium
to long-term feature branches in some centralized location. IIRC the
answer was that there's no need for a secondary server (like gitolite)
and instead we sohuld use private branches in gerrit. Not sure if this
ever worked, AFAIR I tried once and failed - the gerrit management
interface is quite unfriendly (and that's an understatement).

I would very much like to have reasonably easy way to keep such
development branches maintained by (core?) devs on a central server. I
can count at least a half dozen feature branches I worked with
recently that live offline, in gerrit drafts, or in 100 PS long gerrit
"review" changes (which isn't optimal either because history is
impossible to follow). All these could have started out in such
feature branches shared with a few devs with a lifetime of weeks to
months.
I myself keep ending up with dangling drafts and jungle of parents and
dependent commits. Gerrit review and draft changes are clearly not a
solution for such cases and keeping WIP branches offline is an obvious
barrier to collaboration.

Cheers,
--
Szilárd


On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 3:47 AM, Mark Abraham <mark.j.abraham at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Rossen is the guru here, but we administer git.gromacs.org via a gitolite
> server. There are various private branches in gromacs.git to which people
> have direct push access; only Gerrit can push to the main branches. So if
> you let Rossen know what branch name would be good to create, and public
> keys for whoever should have push access, that'll be fine.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>
> On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 5:20 AM, Shirts, Michael R. (mrs5pt)
> <mrs5pt at eservices.virginia.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Apologies if this should have been obvious and I could figure it out.
>>
>> I want to create a new branch in the main repository so I can share a
>> particular functionality that will never make it into the main repository
>> (too much complication, only useable in some very restrictive cases, long
>> story).  I tried googling around, but couldn't find something that made
>> sense. git push origin NEWBRANCH gave me a 'fatal: remote error: access
>> denied or repository not exported: /gromacs.git' error - was this because
>> my permissions weren't set up right?  Should I just set up a private
>> branch?
>>
>> Thanks for any advice!
>>
>> Best,
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Michael Shirts
>> Associate Professor
>> Department of Chemical Engineering
>> University of Virginia
>> michael.shirts at virginia.edu
>> (434) 243-1821
>>
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