Open Stack

Hi,

I'm working on a new project that is moving towards using a clone of the OpenStack infrastructure to manage its source and continuous integration.

We are newbies to git (we are used to svn), and have a question about master branches.

On https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GerritWorkflow, it describes cloning a git repository, and keeping the local master up-to-date with the origin master. They then create their local branches off of that local master (e.g., using git checkout -b <branch>), and check in locally then submit changes to gerrit via git review.

One of our engineers asks:

"Why should we advise people to keep their master branch as a copy of the master branch in gerrit/github, when they already have an exact copy of it? The remote branch is origin/master.  We should just have people branch directly from that rather than merge it onto their own master, which might have other changes.

git fetch origin                                                  # gets the code, no need to merge it
git checkout -b <branch> origin/master          # branch from official master, not my local master

Same thing works when updating existing branch:

get fetch --all
git rebase origin/master

This seems a more straight-forward way of working, rather than pulling to the master branch and then branching from there."

So, we are wondering, why does OpenStack not use the origin/master branch directly? I'm wondering if there are implications for how gerrit works? Or perhaps it makes a local developer repository more tightly coupled to the central repository somehow?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks and kind regards,

Dave