Git Usage Tips#

Here are some tips for git workflow.

How to resolve a conflict with main#

  • First rebase to most recent main

    # The first two steps can be skipped after you do it once.
git remote add upstream [url to tvm repo]
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/main

  • The git may show some conflicts it cannot merge, say conflicted.py.

    • Manually modify the file to resolve the conflict.

    • After you resolved the conflict, mark it as resolved by

      git add conflicted.py

  • Then you can continue rebase by

    git rebase --continue

  • Finally push to your fork, you may need to force push here.

    git push --force

How to combine multiple commits into one#

Sometimes we want to combine multiple commits, especially when later commits are only fixes to previous ones, to create a PR with set of meaningful commits. You can do it by following steps.

  • Before doing so, configure the default editor of git if you haven’t done so before.

    git config core.editor the-editor-you-like

  • Assume we want to merge last 3 commits, type the following commands

    git rebase -i HEAD~3

  • It will pop up an text editor. Set the first commit as pick, and change later ones to squash.

  • After you saved the file, it will pop up another text editor to ask you modify the combined commit message.

  • Push the changes to your fork, you need to force push.

    git push --force

Reset to the most recent main branch#

You can always use git reset to reset your version to the most recent main. Note that all your local changes will get lost. So only do it when you do not have local changes or when your pull request just get merged.

git fetch origin main
git reset --hard FETCH_HEAD

Recover a Previous Commit after Reset#

Sometimes we could mistakenly reset a branch to a wrong commit. When that happens, you can use the following command to show the list of recent commits

git reflog

Once you get the right hashtag, you can use git reset again to change the head to the right commit.

Apply only k-Latest Commits on to the main#

Sometimes it is useful to only apply your k-latest changes on top of the main. This usually happens when you have other m-commits that are already merged before these k-commits. Directly rebase against the main might cause merge conflicts on these first m-commits(which are can be safely discarded).

You can instead use the following command

# k is the concrete number
# Put HEAD~2 for the last 1 commit.
git rebase --onto upstream/main HEAD~k

You can then force push to the main. Note that the above command will discard all the commits before tha last k ones.

What is the consequence of force push#

The previous two tips requires force push, this is because we altered the path of the commits. It is fine to force push to your own fork, as long as the commits changed are only yours.