Hi guys, I wonder how do you manage your git efficiently when developing a meteor-react app? I try to keep my modules as small and separate as possible. So do you create branches for each new feature you develop, and commit changes a file or you commit each change to a file, and so on, please tell me such little tricks and nuances you came up with.
Heya! I’ll chime in, though git repo management styles are as diverse as people’s opinions. 
My own method is a simplified version of Git Flow.
I’ve got two branches that are always present: master and develop. Let’s say at the moment, I have v1.2.0 of my app in production, and master and develop are pointed at the same ref. I want to work on a new feature, so I do this (while develop is checked out):
$ git checkout -b my-new-feature
I work on it and commit as needed. That could be one commit, four commits, etc. Once I’m finished, I push my branch (I use GitHub):
$ git push -u origin my-new-feature
I then go to my GitHub repo, and make a new pull request, merging this feature into develop. I could do this locally, but I like to have a record of it in GitHub. After the PR is merged, I delete the feature branch, then:
$ git checkout develop && git pull && git branch -d my-new-feature
And repeat for every new feature or bugfix I want to work on. When I’m ready to launch a new release into production:
$ git rebase develop master
$ git push
And then deploy! I’ll also go back to GitHub and draft a new release, e.g. v1.2.1, then pull that down… AND, if I’m deploying to Galaxy, which gives back version numbers, I’ll incorporate that into GitHub so I can match up Galaxy deployment versions with my code:
$ git fetch # pull down GitHub release
$ git tag production-v48 # Galaxy version number
$ git push --tags
Working in this way keeps master clean, in case a major bug pops up in production that I need to fix right away, and develop is in an unstable state. So if a bug pops up, no problem:
$ git checkout -b major-bugfix master
(fix bug and commit to major-bugfix branch)
$ git push -u origin major-bugfix
(do PR on GitHub, merge into master directly, deploy to Galaxy or wherever, bump version #, all the stuff mentioned above)
$ git checkout master && git pull
$ git rebase master develop
$ git push # we're pushing develop here, since the rebase above automatically switches you to develop
I think I covered everything. It’s a lot, but it keeps me super organized. If anyone has any tips on streamlining my process, I’d love to hear them!
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Side note: I got obsessed over dead branches hanging around and kept running git remote prune origin every once in awhile, till I discovered you can just put that option inside your project’s .git/config file:
[remote "origin"]
url = git@github.com:xxx/xxx.git
fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
prune = true
And it will auto prune branches after they’re long gone, whenever you do a pull.
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Maybe everyone else is more git-hardcore than I am, but if you are following the approach @ffxsam does (which I do, almost exactly), it can often be tempting to do something like:
git checkout dev
git checkout -b newFeature
Then make a bunch of progress on said newFeature. Then see something small/superfluous like a console.log or typo, etc. and make the adjustment in the newFeature branch. Trust me when I say that this is a slippery slope. Another easy mistake here IMO is to change package versions in order to get your newFeature working.
Instead, you’d want to:
git checkout dev
git checkout -b newFeature
Make progress. Notice the small issue, or that you need to update a package.
git commit
git checkout dev
Correct the bug/update the package.
git commit
git checkout newFeature
git merge dev
This one came back to bite me a few times when trying to track down where I introduced something I shouldn’t have, which is super difficult if you allow yourself to get outside the scope of your branches.
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Yeah, one has to be careful to get out of their feature branch to make a fix to production. For me, it would look like:
# on feature branch my-cool-feature
$ git commit
$ git checkout -b dumb-typo-hotfix master
# make changes to code
$ git commit -a
$ git push
# go to GitHub, open a PR, merge dumb-typo-hotfix into master
$ git checkout master && git pull
$ npm run deploy # Galaxy deploy
$ git rebase master develop && git push
$ git rebase develop my-cool-feature
# keep working (we're back on my-cool-feature branch)
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