Workflow for sharing changes on top of often-rebased work

Workflow for sharing changes on top of often-rebased work

[Mike Mazur]

Hi,

I have a set of changes on top of an SVN tree I'm tracking with git.
The SVN changes regularly, and I like to keep my changes up-to-date as
well. The branch containing my changes lives on my workstation, but
also in a remote repo so I can also work from my laptop, and others can
look at my work.

Here's my current workflow:

First, I clone the SVN repo on my workstation:

$ git svn clone ssh://remote/svn repo
$ cd repo

I then created a bare repo on a server (git://remote/repo) which is how
I share my changes between my workstation, laptop, and others. In my
repo, I add this remote location as origin. Occasionally I will rebase
my master against SVN and push this to the server:

$ git remote add origin git://remote/repo
$ git remote update
$ git checkout master
$ git svn rebase
$ git push origin master:master

Now, to do my work, I made a branch based on master in which my changes
will live:

$ git branch my_work master
$ git checkout my_work

Then I hack away and have a bunch of commits. I publish this branch on
my server:

$ git checkout my_work
$ git push origin my_work # create branch my_work in git://remote/repo

Eventually, I'd like to rebase this work on top of the latest SVN
revision. First I update my master branch against SVN:

$ git checkout master
$ git svn rebase
$ git push origin master:master

And then I rebase my work on top of that:

$ git checkout my_work
$ git rebase master
# resolve conflicts
$ git rebase --continue

At this point, I'd like to push my_work to the server:

$ git checkout my_work
$ git push origin my_work:my_work
To git://remote/repo
 ! [rejected]        my_work -> my_work (non-fast forward)
error: failed to push some refs to 'git://remote/repo'

What's the proper way to do this?

I've read a few threads in the archives and came across an email by
Junio[1] that shows how using `git push --force` and setting
"receive.denynonfastforwards = false" on the remote repo will allow me
to push these changes. Is this the best way forward? If it is, how do I
(or others) update the my_work branch after a non-fast forward push to
the remote repo?

Your insights greatly appreciated!
Mike


[1] http://marc.info/?l=git&m=119540948816950&w=2