Creating Pull-Requests

Example

  • Create an account on https://github.com

  • Create a fork of project pyinstaller/pyinstaller on github.

  • Set up your git client by following this documentation on github.

  • Clone your fork to your local machine.:

    git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/pyinstaller.git
cd pyinstaller

  • Develop your changes (aka “hack”)

    • Create a branch to work on (optional):

      git checkout -b my-patch

    • If you are going to implement a hook, start with creating a minimalistic build-test (see below). You will need to test your hook anyway, so why not use a build-test from the start?

    • Incorporate your changes into PyInstaller.

    • Test your changes by running all build tests to ensure nothing else is broken. Please test on as many platform as you can.

    • You may reference relevant issues in commit messages (like #1259) to make GitHub link issues and commits together, and with phrase like “fixes #1259” you can even close relevant issues automatically.

  • Synchronize your fork with the PyInstaller upstream repository. There are two ways for this:

    1. Rebase you changes on the current development head (preferred, as it results in a straighter history and conflicts are easier to solve):

      git remote add upstream https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller.git
git checkout my-patch
git pull --rebase upstream develop
git log --online --graph

    2. Merge the current development head into your changes:

      git remote add upstream https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller.git
git fetch upstream develop
git checkout my-patch
git merge upstream/develop
git log --online --graph

    For details see syncing a fork at github.

  • Push your changes up to your fork:

    git push

  • Open the Pull Requests page at https://github.com/YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/pyinstaller/pulls and click “New pull request”. That’s it.

Updating a Pull-Request

We may ask you to update your pull-request to improve it’s quality or for other reasons. In this case, use git rebase -i … and git push -f … as explained below. 1 Please do not close the pull-request and open a new one – this would kill the discussion thread.

This is the workflow without actually changing the base:

git checkout my-branch
# find the commit your branch forked from 'develop'
mb=$(git merge-base --fork-point develop)
# rebase interactively without actually changing the base
git rebase -i $mb
# … process rebase
git push -f my-fork my-branch

Or if you want to actually base your code on the current development head:

git checkout my-branch
# rebase interactively on 'develop'
git rebase -i develop
# … process rebase
git push -f my-fork my-branch
1

There are other ways to update a pull-request, e.g. by “amending” a commit. But for casual (and not-so-casual :-) users rebase -i might be the easiest way.