Git Workflow

To contribute to the FLARE source code, please follow the guidelines in this section. If any of the git commands are unfamiliar, check out Chapters 3-5 of the Pro Git book.

General workflow

Development should follow this pattern:

Create an issue on Github describing what you want to contribute.
Create a topic branch addressing the issue. (See the sections below on how to push branches directly or from a forked repository.)
Merge with the development branch when finished and close the issue.

Master, development, and topic branches

The FLARE repository has a three-tiered structure: there is the master branch, which is only for battle-tested code that is both documented and unit tested; the development branch, which is used to push new features; and topic branches, which focus on specific issues and are deleted once the issue is addressed.

You can create local copies of branches from the remote repository as follows:

$ git checkout -b <local branch name> origin/<remote branch name>

Pushing changes to the MIR repo directly

If you have write access to the MIR version of FLARE, you can make edits directly to the source code. Here are the steps you should follow:

Go into the development branch.
Create a new topic branch with a name describing what you’re up to:
```
$ git checkout -b <feature branch name>
```
Commit your changes periodically, and when you’re done working, push the branch upstream:
```
$ git push -u origin <feature branch name>
```
Create a Pull Request that gives a helpful description of what you’ve done. You can now merge and delete the branch.

Pushing changes from a forked repo

Fork the FLARE repository.
Set FLARE as an upstream remote:
```
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/mir-group/flare
```
Before branching off, make sure that your forked copy of the master branch is up to date:
```
$ git fetch upstream
$ git merge upstream/master
```
If for some reason there were changes made on the master branch of your forked repo, you can always force a reset:
```
$ git reset --hard upstream/master
```
Create a new branch with a name that describes the specific feature you want to work on:
```
$ git checkout -b <feature branch name>
```
While you’re working, commit your changes periodically, and when you’re done, commit a final time and then push up the branch:
```
$ git push -u origin <feature branch name>
```
When you go to Github, you’ll now see an option to open a Pull Request for the topic branch you just pushed. Write a helpful description of the changes you made, and then create the Pull Request.