Git private branch pattern

I’ve frequently had to keep local changes that are not committed to our source control (svn actually), for bad or for worse. I’ve been using git-svn and update-index —assume-unchanged to hide these local changes from git status. One downside is that it is possible to accidentally commit those changes by explicitly listing a directory to commit. The bigger downside is that it can make switching between branches a bit painful because the assumed unchanged files need to be scrubbed before git will switch branches. Furthermore, the private changes I’ve made are frequently lost and I often have to re-edit those files after rebasing to master.

The private branch pattern I’m using now is much more convenient. I’ve started creating a ‘private’ branch off of master with all of the local changes that I want to make. Then I can automate rebasing those changes in and out of my working branch as necessary. This also helps make sure that my local changes aren’t lost, and it creates a nice way to catalog them in a changelog.

It works like this:

git checkout master

git checkout -b private

… make private changes and commit them

git checkout work

git rebase private

Now to merge changes to master first run this to remove the private changes

git checkout work

git rebase —onto master private

git checkout master

git merge work

git push origin … or git svn dcommit … etc

I recommend automating this with some aliases in ~/.gitconfig

Also, it is a good idea to make commit messages on the private branch with the prefix "private:" so when you see these commits in your work branch, you can easily identify them.