Here are some notes about using git for the typical situations conkeror hackers are likely to encounter.

General Advice

If you are developing conkeror, i.e. you have unpushed commits or uncommitted changes, forget that git pull even exists. Read on to learn how to use the proper tools and avoid creating merge commits.

Obtaining Conkeror with Git

Anonymous

git clone git://repo.or.cz/conkeror.git

With a repo.or.cz Account

git clone git+ssh://USERNAME@repo.or.cz/srv/git/conkeror.git

Want to pull, have unpushed commits

git fetch
git rebase origin/master

If git rebase resulted in a conflict, see below, "Conflict in Rebase Attempt".

Want to pull, have uncommitted changes

git stash
git pull
git stash apply

Making a Topic Branch

Note: once you start working with branches other than master, you should always use the full form of git push to prevent pushing more branches than you intend. The full form of git push is like git push DESTINATION BRANCH. For example, to push commits in your master branch to the origin repository:

git push origin master

That said, here is how you make a new topic branch. You can do this even if you have uncommitted changes in your working tree.

git checkout -b my-new-branch

Checking out a Topic Branch

Suppose someone else pushed a topic branch to the main repository, and you want to check it out. First, to make git know that the branch exists:

git fetch
#or
git remote update

Confirm that the branch exists:

git branch -r

Then make a local branch which tracks the topic branch in question:

git checkout --track -b the-topic-branch origin/the-topic-branch

See What Changed in Recent Commits

git log -p

Conflict in Rebase Attempt

You tried to use git rebase but got an error message about a conflict.

error: patch failed: <FILENAME>:<LINE-NUMBER>
error: <FILENAME>: patch does not apply
Using index info to reconstruct a base tree...
Falling back to patching base and 3-way merge...
Auto-merged <FILENAME>
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in <FILENAME>
Failed to merge in the changes.
Patch failed at 0001.

When you have resolved this problem run "git rebase --continue".
If you would prefer to skip this patch, instead run "git rebase --skip".
To restore the original branch and stop rebasing run "git rebase --abort".

Don't panic. Open the file(s) indicated by the error, and look for conflict markers. The conflict will be marked with lines containing a long sequence of >>>>>>>, ======, and <<<<<<<. Manually edit the file to resolve the conflicts, i.e. remove the markers and edit the file so that it is in its "correct" state. After correcting the file, run:

git rebase --continue

Keep a Topic Branch Synced With Master

You are working on a topic branch, and there are new commits in origin/master. You want to bring those commits into your branch in order to keep your branch up to date with the master repository.

First, commit any uncommitted changes.

git checkout master
git pull
git checkout your-topic-branch
git rebase origin/master

If there was a conflict during rebase, refer to Conflict in Rebase Attempt above.

An important note about using git rebase. Never rebase commits which you have shared with other people. Never rebase commits that have already been pushed to a branch in conkeror's main repository. If you find yourself in that situation, you will have to make a merge commit.