Gerrit

Some popular open source projects use Gerrit, a code review tool, to manage code contributions. Examples include Go, Android, and Chromium. Gerrit has a somewhat unique model for receiving changes that involves amending commits and pushing to specially formatted ref names. Developers using Gerrit usually build shortcuts on top of Git to manage this complexity, but gg has built-in support for Gerrit. gg makes working with Gerrit as easy as other Git workflows.

Cloning

Cloning a Gerrit repository is as simple as using the gg clone command. You can install the commit hook that adds the Change-Id line to your commit messages by using gg gerrithook.

gg clone https://example.com/foo.git
cd foo
gg gerrithook

Making Changes

Every Gerrit change should be on a separate branch. gg branch will automatically handle setting the branch’s upstream, and gg mail automates pushing the change to the server.

gg branch myfeature
# hack hack hack
gg commit -m "Added a feature"
gg mail -R [email protected]

To make changes after code review, simply amend the commit on your branch and run gg mail again. (The -p flag publishes comments.)

# hack hack hack
gg commit -amend
gg mail -p

Syncing Your Work

If the upstream branch changed, then you can use gg rebase to move your branch.

gg pull && gg rebase

Dependent Changes

If you want to send out a sequence of changes that depend on prior changes, keep the whole sequence on one branch. Running gg mail as before will send the whole chain.

gg branch myfeature
# hack hack hack
gg commit -m "Added first feature"
# hack hack hack
gg commit -m "Added second feature"
gg mail -R [email protected]

If you want to send a subsequence, you can pass -r to gg mail:

# Mails everything in the sequence except the last change.
gg mail -r HEAD~

To amend changes earlier in the sequence, use gg histedit. histedit will pull open your editor, allowing you to pick the commits you want to edit.

gg histedit

Once you’re ready for review, you use gg mail as before.

gg mail -p

As your changes get submitted to the upstream branch, you can use gg evolve to rebase your working branch on top of the new commits created for the working changes. This is usually combined with gg pull and gg rebase to keep your branch up-to-date.

gg pull && gg evolve && gg rebase

Switching Among Changes

You can list all of your branches with:

gg branch

You can use gg update to switch to a different branch.

gg update myfeature
gg update main