Bret's stacked changes Github workflow tools

This repository contains my Github utilities. I use them to improve my workflow when I have multiple stacked commits.

The workflow makes heavy use of git rebase -i, and if you are not familiar with it you probably should become so before attempting to use these tools.

Overview

The workflow these tools supports involves a few steps:

Write the code.
Use git rebase -i to re-arrange the commits into right order and pieces for the PRs you want to submit.
Use git rebase -i to annotate which commits should have their own PRs.
Run git push-branches (a.k.a git pb) to create and push branches for those commits.
Look at GitHub to make sure that they are right.
Run create-reviews to create reviews for the desired PRs
In response to reviews:
Use git rebase -i to make any changes required. The commit messages for these should not be annotated unless you want a separate PR.
Run git pb again to update the PRs on GitHub.
When the oldest PR is approved, run submit-prs to submit it (or a sequence).

Installation

After cloning this repository, you need to:

Build the executables with make.
Arrange for the scripts in the scripts/ directory to be in your path. I do this by symlinking them into ~/bin.
Modify scripts/git-push-branches by changing DIRECTIVE and BRANCH_PREFIX to include what you want them to be (you probably don't want "bretmckee" in them).
Run git config --global alias.pb push-branches to add the pb alias to git.
Create a Personal Access Token and ensure that it is in the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable (maybe via .profile?)

Using the scripts

Create a branch based on a commit message

For your first experiment, I recommend you

Create a github repo to experiment on, allowing Github to create a README.md file.
Create a development branch, change README.md, and commit the change, ending with a string that matches the DIRECTIVE you set above. I like to include a line with two underscores before it to set the text apart, so mine might look like:

Update README.md

Add some more information to the read me.
__
bretmckee-branch: update-readme

Push the new branch to git with git pb
Look at the branch with Github to make sure it was properly created.

Create a PR based on a commit message

To Be Written.

Submit a PR based on a commit message