sync-feature-strategy
The sync-feature-strategy setting specifies how to update local feature
branches with changes from their parent and tracking branches.
options
merge
When using the "merge" sync-feature-strategy, git town sync merges the parent and tracking branches into local feature branches.
merge is the default value because it is the safest and easiest option.
rebase
When set to rebase, git town sync rebases local feature
branches against their parent branches and then does a safe force-push of your
rebased local commits to the tracking branch. This safe force-push uses Git's
--force-with-lease
and
--force-if-includes
switches to guarantee that the force-push will never overwrite commits on the
tracking branch that haven't been integrated into the local Git history.
If the safe force-push fails, Git Town rebases your local branch against its tracking branch to pull in new commits from the tracking branch. If that leads to conflicts, you have a chance to resolve them and continue syncing by running git town continue.
When continuing the sync this way, Git Town tries again to safe-force-push and rebase until the safe-force-push succeeds without removing commits from the tracking branch that aren't part of the local Git history.
This can lead to an infinite loop if you do an interactive rebase that removes
commits from the tracking branch while syncing it. You can break out of this
infinite loop by doing a less aggressive rebase that doesn't remove the remote
commits. Finish the git town sync command and then clean up your commits via a
separate interactive rebase after the sync. At this point another sync will
succeed because the commits you have just cleaned up are now a part of your
local Git history.
The rule of thumb is that pulling in new commits via git town sync and
cleaning up old commits must happen separately from each other. Only then can
Git guarantee that the necessary force-push happens without losing commits.
compress
When using the compress sync strategy, git town sync
first merges the tracking and parent branches and then
compresses the synced branch.
This sync strategy is useful when you want all your pull requests to always consists of only one commit.
Please be aware that this sync strategy leads to more merge conflicts than the "merge" sync strategy when more than one Git user makes commits to the same branch.
change this setting
The best way to change this setting is via the setup assistant.
config file
In the config file the sync-feature-strategy is part
of the [sync-strategy] section:
[sync-strategy]
feature-branches = "merge"
Git metadata
To manually configure the sync-feature-strategy in Git, run this command:
git config [--global] git-town.sync-feature-strategy <merge|rebase>
The optional --global flag applies this setting to all Git repositories on
your machine. Without it, the setting applies only to the current repository.