Manually merging pull requests

This page serves as a simple "how to" for Spring committers when manually merging pull requests from contributors.

Placeholders

Many of the git commands used on this page contain placeholders as defined below.

• <ACCOUNT>: GitHub account for the author of the pull request
• <BRANCH>: branch in pull request author's account (e.g., SPR-####)
• <PULL_REQUEST_NUMBER>: spring-framework pull request number

Example

To determine the values for these placeholders, let's take a look at pull request #111 as an example. From an open pull request page you should be able to find an example git command for pulling the request into your local working directory. For example, if you click on the info icon in the "This pull request can be automatically merged" bar, you should see something like: git pull git://github.com/sbrannen/spring-framework.git SPR-9492

From this information we determine the placeholder values to be the following.

• <ACCOUNT>: sbrannen
• <BRANCH>: SPR-9492
• <PULL_REQUEST_NUMBER>: 111

Performing the Merge

Set up remote, fetch branch, and rebase

$> git remote add <ACCOUNT> https://github.com/<ACCOUNT>/spring-framework.git
$> git fetch <ACCOUNT>
$> git checkout --track <ACCOUNT>/<BRANCH> -b <BRANCH>
$> git rebase master

Modify working directory

• polish and format the contribution as necessary, in line with the Contributor guidelines
• refactor code as necessary to comply with Spring practices (i.e., aim for uniformity with existing code, naming conventions, etc.)
• update and/or add Javadoc and reference manual documentation
• add a new entry in src/dist/changelog.txt if appropriate
• once changes are finalized and committed to the local branch, you typically will want to squash multiple commits into a single commit -- for example, using git rebase --interactive --autosquash -- however, sometimes it gives a more complete picture of the work that was performed in you leave multiple commits as is.
• if the author is a VMware employee, ensure that the author's email (i.e., in the Author: attribute of the commit) points to his or her actual @vmware.com address -- for example, using git commit --amend --author="Firstname Lastname <flastname@vmware.com>"

Merge into master and push

$> git checkout master
$> git merge --no-ff --log -m "Merge pull request #<PULL_REQUEST_NUMBER> from <ACCOUNT>/<BRANCH>" <BRANCH>
$> git push springsource master:master

Note that the above git push command assumes that you have configured a springsource remote similar to the following:

$> git remote show springsource
* remote springsource
  Fetch URL: git@github.com:SpringSource/spring-framework.git
  Push  URL: git@github.com:SpringSource/spring-framework.git

Cleaning Up

Update remote pull request branch to rebased/modified version (optional)

This is only possible if you have write permissions for the remote repository -- for example, if you are merging your own pull request.

$> git push --force <ACCOUNT> <BRANCH>

Delete remote pull request branch (optional)

This is only possible if you have write permissions for the remote repository -- for example, if you are merging your own pull request.

$> git push <ACCOUNT> :<BRANCH>

Delete local branch (optional)

$> git branch -D <BRANCH>

Delete local remote entry (optional)

$> git remote rm <ACCOUNT>