Gerrit

Uploading a draft commit for review

Guide for reviewing

• First and foremost, check correctness to the extent possible;
• As portability and performance are the most important things (after correctness) do check for potential issues;
• Check adherance to GROMACS coding standards;
• We should try to ensure that commmits that implementing bugfixes (as well as important features and tasks) get a Redmine entry created and linking between the commit the Redmine entry is ensure. The linking is done automatically by Redmine if the commit message contains "keyword #issueID", the valid syntax is explaned below.
• If the commit is a bugfix:
  • if present in Redmine it has to contain valid reference to the issue;
  • if it's a major bug, there has to be a bug report filed in Redmine  (with urgent or immediate priority) and referenced appropriately.
• If the commit is a feature/task implementation:
  • if it's present in Redmine it has to contain valid reference to the issue;
  • Othwerwise?

How do I access gerrit behind a proxy?

If you are behind a firewall blocking port 22, you can use socat to overcome this problem by adding the following block to your ~/.ssh/config

Host gerrit.gromacs.org
       User USER
       Hostname gerrit.gromacs.org
       ProxyCommand socat - PROXY:YOURPROXY:gerrit.gromacs.org,proxyport=PORT

Replace YOURPROXY, PORT and USER, (but not PROXY!!!!) by your own seetings

How do I link fixes with Redmine issues?

The linking of commits that relate to an existing issue is done automatically by Redmine if the git commit message contains a reference to the Redmine entry through the issueID, the numeric ID of the respective issue (bug, feature, task). The general syntax of a git comit reference is [keyword] #issueID.

The following two types of refereces are possible:

• For bugfix commits one of the the[Ff]ixes, [Cc]loses keywords should precede the issueID;
• For commits related to an issue (e.g. partial implementation of feature or partial fix) no keyword is needed;

This commit refs #1, #2 and fixes #3

How can I submit conflicting changes?

When there are several, mutually conflicting changes in gerrit pending for review, the submission of the 2nd and subsequent ones will fail. Those need to be resolved locally and updated by

$ git pull --rebase

Then fix the conflicts and use

$ git push

Please add a comment (review without voting) saying that it was rebased with/without conflicts, to help the reviewer. 

How do I upload an update to a pending change?

If one wants to upload an improvement to an existing change in gerrit, one should make sure that the last commit in the log is the commit you want to improve, and it has a commit ID, and you have no unsaved work. If you don't have the commit, you can get it using the link available on the gerrit page:

$ git reset --hard origin/BRANCH
$ git fetch ssh://USER@gerrit.gromacs.org/gromacs refs/changes/?/?/? && git checkout FETCH_HEAD 

(NB be sure to use "checkout" and not "cherry-pick," lest you accidentally change the base and the content in one patch. See below for more information.)

If you made the commit in git, uploaded to gerrit and then reset your branch so that your last commit is no longer in the log, and are using the same repo, you can find the git hash from the gerrit page and get the commit back with

$ git checkout a3e425f4

Either way, then make your changes, add them to the index, and use

$ git commit --amend
$ git push origin HEAD:refs/for/BRANCH

When amending the previous commit message, leave the "Change-Id" intact so that gerrit can recognize this is an update and not open a new issue.

DO NOT rebase and update a change in one step. If both is done in one step, one cannot see the differences to the previous change (using the "Old Version History" dropdown). This makes it difficult to the reviewer because it is not clear what parts have to be re-reviewed. If you need to update and rebase your change please do it in two steps (order doesn't matter). gerrit now has a feature that allows you to rebase within gerrit, which creates the desired independent patch for that rebase (if the rebase is clean). Then you can use the result to either start work, or as a base upon which to cherry-pick or rebase other work you've already done.

How do I get a copy of my commit for which someone else has uploaded a patch?

Gerrit makes this easy. You can download the updated commit in various ways, and even copy a magic git command to your clipboard to use in your shell:

You can select the kind of git operation you want to do (cherry-pick is best if you are currently in the commit that was the parent, checkout is best if you just want to get the commit and not worry about the current state of your checked out git branch) and how you want to get it. The icon on the far right will paste the magic shell command into your clipboard, for you to paste into a terminal to use.

How do I submit lots of independent commits (e.g. bug fixes)?

Simply pushing a whole commit tree of unrelated fixes creates dependencies between them that make for trouble when one of them needs to be changed. Instead, from an up-to-date repo, create and commit the first change (or git cherry-pick it from an existing other branch). Upload it to gerrit. Then do

$ git reset --keep HEAD^

This will revert to the old HEAD, and allow you to work on a new commit that will be independent of the one you've already uploaded. The one you've uploaded won't appear in the commit history until it's been reviewed and accepted on gerrit and you've pulled from the main repo, however the version of it you uploaded still exists in your repo. You can see it with git show or git checkout using its hash - which you can get from the gerrit server or by digging in the internals of your repo.

How can I avoid needing to remember all these arcane git commands?

In your .gitconfig, having set the git remote for the gerrit repo to upload, use something like the following to make life easier:

[alias]
        upload-r45p = push upload HEAD:refs/for/release-4-5-patches
        upload-r46 = push upload HEAD:refs/for/release-4-6
        upload-master = push upload HEAD:refs/for/master
        upload-reset = reset --keep HEAD^

How can I get my patch in gerrit to have a different parent?

Sometimes, some other patch under review is a relevant point from which to start work, and you can use the canned gerrit checkouts to (say) checkout out patch 2117 and start work:

git fetch https://gerrit.gromacs.org/gromacs refs/changes/17/2117/2 && git checkout FETCH_HEAD

Other times you might have already uploaded a patch (e.g. patch 1 of 2145), but now see that some concurrent work makes more sense as a parent commit (e.g. patch 2 of 2117), so check it out as above, and then use the canned gerrit cherry-pick:

git fetch https://gerrit.gromacs.org/gromacs refs/changes/45/2145/1 && git cherry-pick FETCH_HEAD

Resolve any merge commits, check things look OK, and then upload. Because the ChangeId of 2145 hasn't changed, and nothing about 2117 has changed, the second patch set of 2145 will reflect the state of 2145 now having 2117 as a parent.

This can also be useful for constructing a short development branch where the commits are somehow dependent, but should be separated for review purposes. This technique is useful when constructing a series of commits that will contribute to a release.

How can I revert a change back to an old patchset?

If a change accidentally gets updated or when a patchset is incorrect, you might want to revert to an older patchset. This can be done by fetching and old patchset, running git commit --amend to update the time stamp in the commit and pushing the commit back up to gerrit. Note that without the ammending you will get an error from the remote telling you that there are no new changes.

error: server certificate verification failed. CAfile...

If you try to cherry-pick a change from the server, you'll probably get the error:

$ git fetch https://gerrit.gromacs.org/p/gromacs refs/changes/09/109/1 && git cherry-pick FETCH_HEAD
error: server certificate verification failed.
CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
CRLfile: none while accessing https://gerrit.gromacs.org/p/gromacs/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed

As explained here, the problem is with git not trusting the certificate and as a workaround one can set globally

$ git config --global --add http.sslVerify false

or prepend GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=1 to the command

$ GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=1  git fetch https://gerrit.gromacs.org/p/gromacs refs/changes/09/109/1 \
 && git cherry-pick FETCH_HEAD

Various error messages and their meanings

http://review.coreboot.org/Documentation/error-messages.html

Logging into the database underlying gerrit

ssh -p 29418 USER@gerrit.gromacs.org gerrit gsql

Deleting Users

Unless the user was just created and hasn't done anything in Gerrit, it is better to deactive it to make sure Gerrit doesn't have any missing references.See also https://groups.google.com/forum/?fro...ss/HBryN6LFt9A

Deleting

delete from accounts where account_id=id; delete from ACCOUNT_EXTERNAL_IDS where account_id=id;

Deactivate

update accounts set INACTIVE='Y' , PREFERRED_EMAIL='NULL' where ACCOUNT_ID=id;delete from ACCOUNT_EXTERNAL_IDS where account_id=id;

Searching for the account id:

select full_name, PREFERRED_EMAIL, account_id from accounts;

or

SELECT * FROM accounts WHERE full_name='Full Name';

Changing a user's SSH key

cat new-key.pub | ssh -p 29418 ADMINISTRATORUSERNAME@gerrit.gromacs.org gerrit set-account --add-ssh-key - USERNAMETOCHANGE

Look up the USERNAMETOCHANGE from https://gerrit.gromacs.org/#/settings/ when logged in as that user.