git-rv is a command line tool for syncing local git clients with code reviews hosted on a Rietveld code review server such as codereview.appspot.com.

Using git-rv, you can create micro-commits locally, export them for review, and git-rv will create a single commit once your patch has been approved by your reviewers.

When you begin your review, git-rv will track a specific git remote and a branch in that remote. Once a remote branch has been tracked for a review, all diffs sent for review will be relative to that remote branch. If that branch is updated by another commit during your review, you can bring your review branch up to date by running git rv sync.

NOTE: If there are multiple remotes associated with your local git repository and/or multiple branches in the selected remote, the tool will prompt you to make a choice.

To commit reviewed code, you'll never need to run git push; git rv submit will handle that for you. In this process, the tool combines your micro-commits into a single commit and makes sure it pushes your local code to the correct branch in the correct git remote.

To install git-rv, first clone this repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/git-rv.git

and then either copy the git-rv binary into a directory on your $PATH, create a symlink, or add the git-rv directory to your $PATH:

$ cp git-rv/git-rv /some/directory/on/your/path
$ # OR
$ ln -s git-rv/git-rv /some/directory/on/your/path/git-rv
$ # OR
$ PATH=${PATH}:/absolute/path/to/git-rv-directory

NOTE: No matter your choice, it is possible it will require sudo to copy or create a symlink for directories on your path.

Once you've installed, executing git rv {$COMMAND} from within a git repository will call git-rv.

git-rv supports many commands (run git-rv --help) so see them all, but the main ones needed for code reviews are export, submit and sync. For editing and committing your code, creating branches and doing work locally, you can use git as you usually would. It is only when interacting with your code review that you'll need to use git-rv.

A typical review may look like the following:

1. Start a feature branch:

   $ git branch
   * master
   $ git checkout -b {$BRANCH}
   $ git branch
   * {$BRANCH}
     master
   

2. Make an initial commit:

   $ emacs ... # Do some work
   $ git add .
   $ git commit -m "Adding super cool feature X."
   ...
   $ git rv export -r reviewer@example.com
   Upload server: codereview.appspot.com (change with -s/--server)
   Loaded authentication cookies from {$HOME}/.codereview_upload_cookies
   Issue created. URL: http://codereview.appspot.com/{$ISSUE}
   Uploading base file for {$FILENAME1}
   Uploading base file for {$FILENAME2}
   ...
   Metadata update from code server succeeded.
   

3. Address comments from your code review:

   $ emacs ... # Do some more work
   $ git add .
   $ git commit -m "Fixing the blerg typo per reviewer request."
   ...
   $ git rv export
   Upload server: codereview.appspot.com (change with -s/--server)
   Loaded authentication cookies from {$HOME}/.codereview_upload_cookies
   Issue updated. URL: http://codereview.appspot.com/{$ISSUE}
   Metadata update from code server succeeded.
   

4. Find out someone else committed to master, sync their changes in:

   $ git rv sync
   ...
   Auto-merging {$FILENAME1}
   Auto-merging {$FILENAME2}
   ...
   Squash commit -- not updating HEAD
   [{$BRANCH} {$SYNC_COMMIT}] Syncing review {$BRANCH} at {$SYNC_COMMIT}
   2 files changed, ...
   ...
   Exporting synced changes.
   Upload server: codereview.appspot.com (change with -s/--server)
   Loaded authentication cookies from {$HOME}/.codereview_upload_cookies
   Issue updated. URL: http://codereview.appspot.com/{$ISSUE}
   Uploading base file for {$FILENAME1}
   Uploading base file for {$FILENAME2}
   ...
   Metadata update from code server succeeded.
   

   NOTE: This assumes the merge initiated by the sync was all peachy. If not, git-rv will do it's best to make sure you resolve the merge conflicts and get the review back on track.

5. Time to submit:

   Trying to submit before one of your reviewers gives an LGTM (short for "looks good to me") will result in a failure:

   $ git rv submit
   This review has not been approved.
   

   Once the review has been LGTM'ed by one of your reviewers, you can submit your changes:

   $ git rv submit
   Checking out origin/review-{$ISSUE} at {$SYNC_COMMIT}
   Adding reviewed commits.
   
   Adding commit:
   Adding super cool feature X.
   
   Reviewed in https://codereview.appspot.com/{$ISSUE}
   
   Replacing review branch '{$BRANCH}' with newly committed content.
   
   Loaded authentication cookies from {$HOME}/.codereview_upload_cookies
   
   Message:
   
   Added in
   https://code.google.com/p/dhermes-projects/source/detail?r=7fb62f85b1209fb62d8181097bfb2529cc2fc875
   
   posted to code review issue.
   
   Issue {$ISSUE} has been closed.
   

For more details on the other commands, simply execute git-rv --help or git rv {$COMMAND} --help.

Feel free to file new issues and feature request, comment on existing ones and fork this repository to your heart's content.

If you are working on changes to git-rv, you will need to be able to run make_executable.py to create a new git-rv binary based on your working copy of the repository.

In order to do this you'll need to initialize the Rietveld git submodule. Since Rietveld is a Mercurial project, we use git-remote-hg to include it as a git submodule. To pull it, run

$ # If you don't have git-remote-hg installed
$ sudo pip install --upgrade git-remote-hg
$ git submodule update --init

If you'd like to use git-rv to do code reviews for your hg repositories, this is fully supported. In the same fashion we use git-remote-hg to support the Rietveld submodule, it can be used to work on an hg repository.

For example, to work on google-api-python-client, we check out the repository with git by appending a dummy protocol hg::

git clone hg::https://code.google.com/p/google-api-python-client/

(This looks similar to the protocols we're used to: http:, https: and git:.)

After doing this, you can jump in right away and interact with the repository as if it were a git repository:

cd google-api-python-client
emacs ... # Do some work
git rv export -r reviewer@example.com

After the review is complete, you can submit via git rv submit. For Google Code Hosting reviews (and other Mercurial hosting sites to follow), after submitting, a link to the newly pushed commit will be added to the Rietveld review.