workshopgitbranches

Workshops always have that little extra if there is an actual codebase available that people can use as a start, of of which the exercises can build, etc. etc. Often, these GIT repo's will have exercises and example solutions on separate branches. Maintaining a repository like that is a pain in the ass, especially when you have to update a shared file on 16 different branches.

This little commandline tool, written in Golang, simplifies that a bit for you.

NOTE: There are no tests for the code (yet), so use at your own risk.

Building the code

1. Run go get github.com/joostvanwollingen/workshopgitbranches.
2. Run go get -d ./... to download the dependencies (only http://github.com/urfave/cli at the moment)
3. Run go install in the workshopgitbranches folder
4. Run workshopgitbranches -v to check if everything is setup correctly.

Or just grab a binary from the releases.

Usage

workshopgitbranches assumes you do every operation on master for now. Don't use it from other branches.

First time use

To create the branches and shared folders:

1. Ensure you are on master.
2. Run workshopgitbranches init.

Building branches

1. Put files that you need on every branch in the shared folder.
2. Put branch specific files in the branches\<branchname> folder.
3. Run workshopgitbranches assemble to test your build. This will create a target folder containing folders for each branch, merged with the shared files. Note: files that are both in the shared and branch specific folders, will be overridden with the branch specific version.
4. Running workshopgitbranches build will: delete all branches in the GIT repository that are in your branches folder, merge the shared and branch folders, create one commit with these files on each branch.

Example

Running workshopgitbranches against the following example directory structure would result in 5 branches, named 1_first, 1_first_solution, 2_second, 3_third, anotherbranch. Each of the branches will contain all the files below the branch folder and the files from the shared folder. All files are included recursively.

myworkshop/ (on master branch)
├── branches
│   ├── 1_first
│   │   └── 1.txt
│   ├── 1_first_solution
│   │   └── 1.txt
│   ├── 2_second
│   │   ├── 2.txt
│   │   └── src
│   │       └── main
│   │           └── java
│   │               └── Main.java
│   ├── 3_third
│   │   └── 3.txt
│   ├── anotherbranch
│   │   └── another.txt
│   └── ignore.file
└── shared
    ├── shared
    │   └── gotcha
    ├── 1.txt
    ├── readme.md
    └── we need this too.file