FAQ Get,update GIT project sources

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This is information on how you can get sources of Dolibarr project using GIT. Several methods are described, but we recommand using the one with a GitHub user account.

Get last version of sources by tgz download

This method can be used by non technical users. It allows you to get sources of main development branch (called HEAD) by just downloading a file: This operation consist to get last version of Dolibarr files that are packaged each night into a tgz file. File is available with link:

Last GitHub snapshot of Dolibarr source files.

New files overwrite old ones. The inconvenient of this method is that you must download and uncompress package each time you want to get updates.

Developers should not use this method to get sources but the next one.

Get last version of sources using a GIT anonymous access

You can use this method if you don't have any GIT access. With this method, you won't be able to submit any changes, so, if you are a developer, it is recommended to create a GitHub account and use the next method instead of this one.

Prerequisite

• With Eclipse IDE

First you must have a working install of Eclipse. EGit plugin must also have been installed. For this, use the Find And Install process into Eclipse menu, add the GIT update URL:

https://download.eclipse.org/egit/updates

Then choose to install EGit (No need to choose JGit)

• With the GIT Command Line Client Interface

You need to install GIT client (GIT command line tool with Linux installed with "sudo apt-get install git", or the GIT client for Windows found at https://git-scm.com/download/win).

Clone process

First, enter value of the repository with reference sources into your GIT client tool.

• With Eclipse, go into perspective GIT, click onto button "Clone GIT repository". Enter GIT URL of project to get.

GIT Url for Dolibarr official source is:

git://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr.git (read only)
or if you created a fork of dolibarr github from github web interface
git@github.com:yourgitaccount/dolibarr.git (read and write access)

Your Eclipse GIT client will ask you to choose the branches you are interested in. Branches not selected now could be selected later by doing a "Fetch" from the "Remotes" view, but try to choose only the branch you need. This will save you time and problems later.

Note: if you are behind a firewall, you must set Eclipse proxy credentials into Eclipse menu Windows - Preferences - General - Network connection and use the alternative URL:

https://gitlogin:gitpassword@github.com/yourgitaccount/dolibarr.git

• With GIT on Command Line Interface:

First setup your git client:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "user@domain.com"
git config --list

Then clone repository locally:

git://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr.git (read only)
or if you created a fork of dolibarr github from github web interface
git@github.com:yourgitaccount/dolibarr.git (read and write access)

Note: if you are behind a firewall, you must set your porxy information and use the alternative https URL:

git config --global http.proxy http://proxyuser:proxypass@proxyserver:proxyport
git clone https://gitlogin:gitpassword@github.com/yourgitaccount/dolibarr.git dolibarr

Once this step is validated, your GIT client will download all files from remote GIT server. This may last several seconds or minutes.

Once download is finished, you must choose which branch to us to work on.

• With GIT on Command Line Interface;

git checkout develop
git checkout x.y

This will create local branch and make checkout automatically.

• With Eclipse, right click on "Branches - Remotes - The branch you want to duplicate locally".

Choose "Create Branch" (and check the box "Checkout"). This will duplicate content of branch to work on it locally and will refresh your "Working Directory" to work on this branch.

Create Eclipse project:

If using Eclipse, once your branch is created locally, create a PHP project from assistant by choosing "Create from existing project" and select directory that is your GIT local repository (Do not choose to create a PHP project from scratch). Then right click on project from your Eclipse workspace and Choose "Team - Share". Select GIT and click on option "Use or create repository in parent folder of project". An alternate method is File->Import, Git->Project from Git, Select the Git repository and Next, Use New project Wizard -> Php project, enter the folder of you GIT local repository.

Then, you can setup Eclipse to avoid it to scan all project files for its build tools (Outline scanner, TODO scanner, syntax scanner...). This will avoid Eclipse to be too slow. For this, right click on project, choose Build Path and setup it like into following screenshot.

Get last version of sources using a GitHub user access

Prerequisite

• With Eclipse IDE

You must before create an account on GitHub (https://github.com/) and upload a public RSA or DSA certificate into your account profile.

Then, you must have a working install of Eclipse. EGit plugin must also have been installed (this is the case by default on any recent Eclipse version). For this, use the Find And Install process into Eclipse menu, add the GIT update URL:

https://download.eclipse.org/egit/updates

Then choose to install EGit.

• With the GIT Command Line Client Interface:

You must before create an account on GitHub (https://github.com/) and upload a public RSA or DSA certificate into your account profile.

Then, you need to install GIT client (GIT command line tool with Linux installed with "sudo apt-get install git", or the GIT client for Windows found at https://git-scm.com/download/win).

Fork process

Login to Github, with login you created in previous step. Then go onto page

https://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr

And click on button "Fork".

This will create a copy (a fork) of project into your own github area. Because you will be the owner of this fork, you will have all permissions on it to be used in next steps.

Clone process

Then process is same as getting sources with anonymous access.

URL to use for GIT clone is same:

git@github.com:YourGitHubLogin/dolibarr.git

Note that a HTTPS URL is also available but it's sometimes offline (so prefer using first one, link with HTTPS is required only if you are behind a firewall):

https://yourgithublogin@github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr.git

Update your repository

To update your local workspace:

• With Eclipse IDE:

right click on Eclipse project and select "Pull".

If you made some changes into your Eclipse workspace on files that were changed into the GIT remote reference, your GIT client will make a merge automatically.

• If there is conflicts, the merge will mark all conflict files as "conflict" (See later to solve this state).
• If not, you will get all new version files including all your changes.

If you already have commited some files into your local repository, your workspace will be marked as "Merged". All you have to do is make a commit to validate your local repository as including your changes and changes made by others.

• With the GIT Command Line Client Interface:

git pull

Commit and publish your changes

To see all changes you made into your working directory and waiting to be added into Git:

• With GIT Command Line Interface:

git status
git diff subdir/filename

To add changes made into your local repository into the GIT index, then commit this index :

• With Eclipse: Right click on file or directory to commit. Select file to add/remove/update into commit.
• With GIT Command Line Interface:

git commit -a -m "Commit text"

This will save add and changes into your local branch.

To push them on the GIT repository server,

• With Eclipse: right click on project and choose "Team - Push to Upstream".
• With GIT Command Line Interface:

git push

To cancel a commit:

• With GIT Command Line Interface, if commit was not already pushed:

git reset --soft HEAD~1

• With GIT Command Line Interface, if commit was already pushed:

git revert IdCommit  or  git revert HEAD  (for last commit)

To merge changes done into your forked GIT instance into official Dolibarr instance:

• Go into GitHub web interface of your forked Git instance.
• Click on small button "Create a Pull request".
• Choose commit you request inclusion and validate.

Ask official project to include your changes (PR)

Once you pushed one or several commit toward your distant fork area on github, you can ask the Dolibarr core team to include it into official project. We call this "making a Pull or a Merge request" also called "PR" or "MR". For this, follow this tutorial: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request/

Note that you can request to include your change inthe develop branch or into a stable branch if this is a bug fix. The following chart show you how the core team decide if a PR is merged into a maintenance or the develop branch: Category:RoadMap#Merging_PR_process_.28develop_or_maintenance_.3F.29

Add a given external commit into your current repository

Some developers may work and do commit into their own Git repository after forking the project. If you are interesting into getting this changes, you can import them with the following steps.

You need both Eclipse and GIT Command Line interface to achieve this:

• First, go into GIT setup view and right click on "Remotes" of your Eclipse Git working space and choose "Create a remote..."
• Type name or remote fork the developer has create (in most cases, it's developer Git login). For example: "thedevlogin". Choose also "Configure Fetch".
• Type URI of Git repository of developer. For example: git://github.com/thedevlogin/dolibarr.git. Also add a refspec value to declare the branch you want to get. For example: refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/thedevlogin/master. Click "Save and Fetch". A new entry will be added into "Remote Tracking" making possible to read/get commits done into this branch.

Now, go on command line of your git repository (in most cases on Linux, it's /home/yourlogin/git/yourdolibarr) and type the git cherry-pick command:

git cherry-pick -x commitid

where commitid is value of commit id you want to get.

Once this is done, go back to Eclipse and make a refresh on project. You will see modified files appears with decorators (with conflicts if there is).

It the cherry-pick fails because of conflicts, you can cancel the cherry-pick try with

git cherry-pick --abort

Solving a conflict

If a file has been marked as "conflict" after a Pull, open the file to edit it. Find string "<<<<<<<<<<", you will see part of code that is conflict between "<<<<<<<<<" and ">>>>>>>>". Edit manually code lines and remove "<<<<<<<<" and ">>>>>>>".

Then, right click on file and select "Add".

If you prefer to forget completely all changes you made into all files (so to restore you workspace with content of remote repository), you can make a hard reset:

• With Eclipse: Right click on project top line and select "Reset" then "Hard" then "Reference - HEAD".
• With GIT Command Line Interface: You can achieve this with command

git reset --hard HEAD

To reset changes you commited but not pushed to origin

git reset --hard origin/develop

Tagging sources

With GIT Command Line Interface:

To add a tag to a current version:

git tag -a -m "Release|Maintenance release x.y.z" "x.y.z"
or
git tag -a -f -m "Beta x.y.betai" "x.y.betai_YYYYMMDD" idcommit   # -f force if an existing tag already exists, idcommit allows to choose commit to tag

git push --tags   # To push tags to remote origin

To remove a tag:

git tag -d "x.y.z_YYYYMMDD"
git push remoteentryname :x.y.z_YYYYMMDD    # To validate delete on remote origin

Creating a new branch

With GIT Command Line Interface:

Create a clone (see previously) of the branch from where you want to create another branch, then go into directory and launch command:

git branch x.y
git push origin x.y

With Eclipse:

Create a clone (see previously) of the branch from where you want to create another branch, with a checkout done. The go into view git. Choose branches, remote tracking and select start branch. Right click and choose "Create branch". Then make a push to create branch remotely. Then go into "Remotes - origins" and edit the entries to pull and push onto new branch. It may also be required to edit the .git/config file to have project linked by default onto new branch.

Deleting a branch

With GIT Command Line Interface:

Do a push on branch but add : before name of branch:

git push remoteentryname :branchnametodelete

Merging a maintenance branch x.x into dev branch

With Eclipse:

• Go onto the root directory of project with a checkout of the dev branch.
• Check fetch setup to be sure, this repository contains both information of dev branch and version x.x you want to merge.
• Right click onto root directory and choose "Team - Merge". Select "x.x". Click onto "Merge options - Commit", because we want to commit merged branch if there is no conflicts.
• Once merge is done, check everything is ok.
• Commit and push.

Pushing a branch onto another Git server

You may want to synchronize another GIT server. To synchronize push to another server, this is how to proceed. With Eclipse:

• Go onto Git clone view and add a remote with a name, choose "Configure push" and enter URL. For example, for name "sourceforge" and URL "ssh://yoursourceforgelogin@git.code.sf.net/p/dolibarr/code"
• Just validate, a first push will be done automatically.
• To force sync, run

git push sourceforge develop
git push --tags sourceforge develop

Statistics

With GIT Command Line interface:

To count number of changes developers have made between a version x and y:

• First, search commit id of tags you want to compare

To find id_start (common commit id between 2 versions/tags)

git merge-base refs/tags/3.3.0 origin/3.4
or
git merge-base 3.7 origin/develop

To find id_end, choose among

git show-ref

Choose a value for id_start and id_end Note: id_end can be HEAD.

• Then run git log to have list of all changes from last common commit to last commit

git log id_start..id_end

• To get total number of added/deleted lines:

git log --ancestry-path --numstat --pretty="%H" id_start..id_end | awk 'NF==3 {plus+=$1; minus+=$2} END {printf("+%d, -%d\n", plus, minus)}'

To count number of changes finally between a version x and y (it differs from previous count because in previous count, a change can be done 2 times at two different moment to change differently. With second method, you count changes finally found if changes were ok at first try).

• Use same method than previously but instead of running git log, run git diff.

git diff -b -M --numstat --pretty="%H" id_start..id_end | awk 'NF==3 {plus+=$1; minus+=$2} END {printf("+%d, -%d\n", plus, minus)}'

More information in GIT usage is available here.