ANNOUNCE: git-integration -- Easily manage integration branches

I wrote this script a few months ago and have been using it pretty much daily since then, so I figure it's time to see if anyone else finds it useful...

git-integration [1] is a script to help manage integration branches in Git. By defining a base point and a set of branches to be merged to form the integration branch, git-integration lets you easily rebuild an integration branch when anything in it changes, as well as showing you the status of all of the branches in the integration branch.

For example, the instruction sheet for git-integration's "pu" branch recently looked like this:

	base master

	merge make-clean

	  Add a "clean" target to the makefile.

	merge version

	  Support for "--version" option.

	  N.B. this builds on "make-clean".

	merge skip-option

	  Needs more work to be able to handle "branch not found".

This tells git-integration to base the "pu" branch on "master" and merge the "make-clean", "version" and "skip-option" branches in. The comments following the "merge" instructions are added to the commit message for the corresponding merge commit. When I want to rebuild the "pu" branch I simply do:

	$ git integration --rebuild pu

To change the contents of the branch, I either edit the instruction sheet manually:

	$ git integration --edit pu

or quickly add a new branch from the command line:

	$ git integration --add my-new-branch pu

In fact, I can combine these to get the benefit of bash-completion on the branch name and the ability to edit the instruction sheet - when multiple commands are specified, git-integration performs each of them in a sensible order, described in the manpage [2].

[1] http://johnkeeping.github.io/git-integration/ [2] http://johnkeeping.github.io/git-integration/git-integration.html