About Git write access: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Before everything else, you should know how to use GIT properly. Luckily Git comes with excellent documentation. git --help man git shows you the available subcommands, git --help man git- shows information about the subcommand . The most comprehensive manual is the website Git Reference http://gitref.org/ For more information about the Git project, visit http://git-scm.com/ Consult these resources whenever you have problems, they are quite exhaustive. You do not need a special username or password. All you need is to provide a ssh public key to the Git server admin. What follows now is a basic introduction to Git and some FFmpeg-specific guidelines. Read it at least once, if you are granted commit privileges to the FFmpeg project you are expected to be familiar with these rules. I. BASICS: ========== 0. Get GIT: You can get git from http://git-scm.com/ 1. Cloning the source tree: git clone git://git.videolan.org/ffmpeg This will put the FFmpeg sources into the directory . git clone git@git.videolan.org:ffmpeg This will put the FFmpeg sources into the directory and let you push back your changes to the remote repository. 2. Updating the source tree to the latest revision: git pull (--ff-only) pulls in the latest changes from the tracked branch. The tracked branch can be remote. By default the master branch tracks the branch master in the remote origin. Caveat: Since merge commits are forbidden at least for the initial months of git --ff-only or --rebase (see below) are recommended. --ff-only will fail and not create merge commits if your branch has diverged (has a different history) from the tracked branch. 2.a Rebasing your local branches: git pull --rebase fetches the changes from the main repository and replays your local commits over it. This is required to keep all your local changes at the top of FFmpeg's master tree. The master tree will reject pushes with merge commits. 3. Adding/removing files/directories: git add [-A] git rm [-r] GIT needs to get notified of all changes you make to your working directory that makes files appear or disappear. Line moves across files are automatically tracked. 4. Showing modifications: git diff will show all local modifications in your working directory as unified diff. 5. Inspecting the changelog: git log You may also use the graphical tools like gitview or gitk or the web interface available at http://git.videolan.org 6. Checking source tree status: git status detects all the changes you made and lists what actions will be taken in case of a commit (additions, modifications, deletions, etc.). 7. Committing: git diff --check to double check your changes before committing them to avoid trouble later on. All experienced developers do this on each and every commit, no matter how small. Every one of them has been saved from looking like a fool by this many times. It's very easy for stray debug output or cosmetic modifications to slip in, please avoid problems through this extra level of scrutiny. For cosmetics-only commits you should get (almost) empty output from git diff -wb Also check the output of git status to make sure you don't have untracked files or deletions. git add [-i|-p|-A] Git will select the changes to the files for commit. Optionally you can use the interactive or the patch mode to select hunk by hunk what should be added to the commit. git commit Git will commit the selected changes to your current local branch. You will be prompted for a log message in an editor, which is either set in your personal configuration file through git config core.editor or set by one of the following environment variables: GIT_EDITOR, VISUAL or EDITOR. Log messages should be concise but descriptive. Explain why you made a change, what you did will be obvious from the changes themselves most of the time. Saying just "bug fix" or "10l" is bad. Remember that people of varying skill levels look at and educate themselves while reading through your code. Don't include filenames in log messages, Git provides that information. Possibly make the commit message have a terse, descriptive first line, an empty line and then a full description. The first line will be used to name the patch by git format-patch. 8. Renaming/moving/copying files or contents of files: Git automatically tracks such changes, making those normal commits. mv/cp path/file otherpath/otherfile git add [-A] . git commit Do not move, rename or copy files of which you are not the maintainer without discussing it on the mailing list first! 9. Reverting broken commits git revert git revert will generate a revert commit. This will not make the faulty commit disappear from the history. git reset git reset will uncommit the changes till rewriting the current branch history. git commit --amend allows to amend the last commit details quickly. git rebase -i origin/master will replay local commits over the main repository allowing to edit, merge or remove some of them in the process. Note that the reset, commit --amend and rebase rewrite history, so you should use them ONLY on your local or topic branches. The main repository will reject those changes. 10. Preparing a patchset. git format-patch [-o directory] will generate a set of patches out of the current branch starting from commit. By default the patches are created in the current directory. 11. Sending patches for review git send-email will send the patches created by git format-patch or directly generates them. All the email fields can be configured in the global/local configuration or overridden by command line. 12. Pushing changes to remote trees git push Will push the changes to the default remote (origin). Git will prevent you from pushing changes if the local and remote trees are out of sync. Refer to 2 and 2.a to sync the local tree. git remote add Will add additional remote with a name reference, it is useful if you want to push your local branch for review on a remote host. git push Will push the changes to the remote repository. Omitting refspec makes git push update all the remote branches matching the local ones. 13. Finding a specific svn revision Since version 1.7.1 git supports ':/foo' syntax for specifying commits based on a regular expression. see man gitrevisions git show :/'as revision 23456' will show the svn changeset r23456. With older git versions searching in the git log output is the easiest option (especially if a pager with search capabilities is used). Contact the project admins if you have technical problems with the GIT server.