Gitlab

Overview

The preferred method of contributing patches to Exherbo is via the new Gitlab instance. It replaces the Gerrit instance we had used before.

Initial setup

First of all you will have to create an account on our Gitlab instance. Do note that other Gitlab accounts (e.g. ones created on Gitlab.com) won’t work. Creating one on our instance of Gitlab is pretty straight forward:

1. Go to our Gitlab instance and click on “Register”.
2. Fill in your information.
3. Add your SSH key(s) for easier pushing via SSH instead of HTTPS. This guide assumes that you use SSH pushing/pulling.

Consider also enabling 2FA for improved security access and signing your commits with GPG.

Cloning repositories

1. Go to Gitlab’s frontage after you’ve signed in and search for the repository you want to clone. Click on its name to open it.

2. Click on Fork.

3. Either:

• Clone your fork of it, e.g. git clone git@gitlab.exherbo.org:<user name>/<repository>.git.

• If you already cloned the repo you can add your fork as remote, e.g. git remote add my-fork git@gitlab.exherbo.org:<user name>/<repository>.git

Maintaining your repository

The Exherbo Gitlab instance is the perfect place to maintain your exheres repository; please consider following these suggestions to improve your experience:

• Enable notifications for Issues and Merge Requests (that are disabled by default)
• Enable fast-forward merges to suppress annoying merge commits

Keeping forks updated

You should always ensure that you have the latest version of the repository you want to work on before starting your work to avoid duplicating work and merge conflicts. You can do so with:

git pull <exherbo-remote> master --rebase

Getting more information

In case you’re still unsure on how to use Gitlab you can checkout Gitlab’s superb documentation.

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Copyright 2018 Rasmus Thomsen