[fpc-devel] Submitting patches using git

[Ryan Joseph]

I’m getting better with git but I’m still having problems with basic workflows. My newest dilemma is trying to submit a patch which is actually up to date with the current master branch (https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=35140). Here’s what I do:

1) pull changes from the master remote upstream into my master branch (this is: https://github.com/graemeg/freepascal).
2) merge the updated local master branch into the feature branch and resolve any conflicts if need be.
3) remove .gitignore (which now includes thousands of .o/.ppu files which need to be deleted) and any other unrelated personal files.
4) squash all commits into a single so the patch doesn’t include the entire commit history.
5) finally make a nice clean patch using: git format-patch master --stdout > patch.diff

The problem is that since I merged the updated master branch I can’t squash commits because git complains "only commits reachable from HEAD can be modified”. Is this not how I’m supposed to keep my local feature branch up-to-date with the server? Any advice would be great.

Regards,
	Ryan Joseph