NAME

git arc — a wrapper to improve integration between git and arcanist

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The git arc utility creates and manages FreeBSD Phabricator reviews based on git commits. It is geared towards FreeBSD development. It requires the devel/git, devel/arcanist-lib and textproc/jq packages; these will be installed automatically if git arc is installed via the devel/freebsd-git-arc package.

git arc assumes a one-to-one relationship between git commits and Differential Revisions, and requires the titles in a pair to match. Commit titles must therefore be unique across all open Differential Revisions authored by the submitter. If the title of either a commit or its associated Differential Revision is changed, the other must be updated manually to maintain the match.

The first parameter must be a verb. Most verbs accept one or more git commit references: commit hashes, branch names, commit ranges, and so on. A branch name refers to the single commit at its tip; use a commit range to operate on multiple commits. See git-rev-parse(1) for details on specifying commit references. The available verbs are:

create

Create new Differential Revisions from the specified commits. Accepts options:

-l

Before processing commit(s) display list of commits to be processed and wait for confirmation.

-r reviewer

Add one or more reviewers, separated by commas, to revision(s) being created. Each argument must be an existing Phabricator user or group. Note that group reviewers must be specified using their hashtag (e.g. #jails for the "Jails" group).

-s subscriber

Add one or more subscribers, separated by commas, to revision(s) being created. Each argument must be an existing Phabricator user or group.

-p parent

Specify the parent of the first commit in the list. This is useful when adding more commits on top of an already existing stack in Phabricator.

list

Print the associated Differential Revisions for the specified commits.

patch

Try to apply patches from one or more Differential Revision to the currently checked out tree. The following options are accepted:

-b

Switch to a new branch before applying the patches.

-c

Commit each applied patch to the git checkout. The commit message and author are taken from the Differential Revision.

-r

Rather than using the arc command to apply the patch, download the raw patch file and apply it using git-apply(1). This is useful for avoiding some misfeatures of arc, particularly its behavior of trying to update all remotes in the tree in some cases.

-s

Recursively apply the parent revisions of the specified commit. This can be used to apply patch stacks by specifying the top-most, i.e., most recent commit in the stack.

stage

Prepare a series of commits to be pushed to the upstream FreeBSD repository.

First, the target branch is checked out; by default this is the main branch but can be overridden with the -b option. Then, the specified commits are cherry-picked with review tags added to the commit log message, and the log message is opened in an editor for any final updates. The commits need not have associated Differential Revisions.

This is intended to be used after code review has been completed, and the commits are ready to be pushed to an upstream repository.

update

Synchronize the Differential Revisions associated with the specified commits. Currently only the diff is updated; the review description and other metadata are not synchronized. If a message is specified with -m, that message is added as a note to the Differential Revision. If no message is supplied, the user's editor will be opened to provide an update message for each revision. If an empty message is supplied via -m, then no notes will be added when updating Differential Revisions.

If -l is used, display list of commits to be updated and wait for confirmation of the list rather than prompting for each commit.

CONFIGURATION

These are manipulated by git-config:

arc.assume_yes

Assume a “yes” answer to all prompts instead of prompting the user. Equivalent to the -y flag. Defaults to false.

arc.browse

Try to open newly created reviews in a browser tab. Defaults to false.

arc.list

Always use “list mode” (-l) with create and update. In this mode, the list of git revisions to use is listed with a single prompt before creating or updating reviews. The diffs for individual commits are not shown. Defaults to false.

arc.verbose

Always use verbose output. Equivalent to the -v flag. Defaults to false.

EXAMPLES

The typical end-to-end usage looks something like this.

Commit changes with a message and create a Differential Review:

$ git commit -m "kern: Rewrite in Rust"
$ git arc create HEAD

Make changes to the diff based on review feedback, then amend the changes to the existing commit and update the Differential Review:

$ git commit --amend
$ git arc update HEAD

Now that all reviewers are happy, it is time to stage the commit and push it:

$ git arc stage HEAD
$ git push freebsd HEAD:main

Create a Phabricator review using the contents of the most recent commit in your git checkout:

$ git arc create -r markj,#jails HEAD

The commit title is used as the review title, the commit log message is used as the review description, and <markj@FreeBSD.org> is added as a reviewer. Also, the “Jails” reviewer group is added using its hashtag.

Create a series of Phabricator reviews for each of HEAD~2, HEAD~ and HEAD:

$ git arc create HEAD~3..HEAD

Pairs of consecutive commits are linked into a patch stack. Note that the first commit in the specified range is excluded.

Create a series of separate reviews for each of the following commits:

$ git arc create b409afcfedcdda ca03ed1345aff0

Update the review corresponding to commit b409afcfedcdda:

$ git arc update b409afcfedcdda

The title of the commit must be the same as it was when the review was created. Note that the review description is not automatically updated.

Apply the patch in review D12345 to the currently checked-out tree, and stage it:

$ git arc patch D12345

Apply the patch in review D23456 to the currently checked-out tree, and commit it to the tree with the commit message in the review and make the best guess for what to use for author. If the guess is considered unreliable, the user is prompted to see if they wish to use it (or abort).

$ git arc patch -c D23456

List the status of reviews for all the commits in the branch “feature”:

$ git arc list main..feature

Update reviews for all commits in the branch “feature” after rebasing:

$ git arc update -lm "Rebase" main..feature

SEE ALSO

build(7), development(7)

HISTORY

The git arc utility appeared in the src tools collection in FreeBSD 14.0.

AUTHORS

The git arc utility was written by Mark Johnston <markj@FreeBSD.org> and the manual page was written by Daniel Ebdrup Jensen <debdrup@FreeBSD.org>.