A day-to-day workflow

This walks through the everyday loop of working in central: edit something, check central todo for what needs attention, act on it, and confirm the dashboard is clear again.

central todo’s dashboard covers every subrepo central knows about, so this fake repo (unlike the one on the Export page) is built with a few of them, not just widget - enough to show the dashboard correctly narrows down to only what needs attention.

With nothing out of the ordinary going on, the dashboard is empty:

$ central todo

Editing directly in central

Suppose someone edits repo/widget/README.md directly from within central and commits it there - the way most day-to-day changes happen.

central todo now shows widget needs attention:

$ central todo
┌──────────┬───────────┬──────┐
│ Repo     │ Next step │ Diff │
├──────────┼───────────┼──────┤
│ central  │ push      │    2 │
│   widget │ export    │    2 │
└──────────┴───────────┴──────┘

Following it means exporting:

$ central export widget -m "Document installation"
==================== widget ====================
[ OK ] Applied patch in the subrepo.
[ OK ] Exported to [widget].

widget’s row is still there, but the next step changed: export only advances the subrepo’s subrepo branch, so widget’s own main branch is now behind it. This is a genuine second step, not a leftover of the first:

$ central todo
┌──────────┬──────────────┬──────┐
│ Repo     │ Next step    │ Diff │
├──────────┼──────────────┼──────┤
│ central  │ push         │    6 │
│   widget │ advance-main │      │
└──────────┴──────────────┴──────┘

advance-main is exactly that: catch widget’s main branch up:

$ central advance-main widget
==================== widget ====================
Updating 1185512..f452a6f
Fast-forward
 README.md | 2 ++
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)

widget is left with a push next step, same as central itself: both now have local commits their own remote doesn’t have yet - central’s edit and the .gitrepo update export made, and the commit advance-main just fast-forwarded widget’s own main to:

$ central todo
┌──────────┬───────────┬──────┐
│ Repo     │ Next step │ Diff │
├──────────┼───────────┼──────┤
│ central  │ push      │    6 │
│   widget │ push      │      │
└──────────┴───────────┴──────┘

push closes the loop for both at once - a real git push to each one’s own remote:

$ central push central widget --yes
==================== central ====================
[ OK ] Pushed.
==================== widget ====================
[ OK ] Pushed.

And the dashboard is clear again - back where we started, the change now genuinely out, all the way to both real remotes:

$ central todo