Help with gatekeeper workflow.

[Eric Berry]

Hi all,
   I'm trying to set up the situation where one developer is required to
review the code of another before the code is committed to the main branch,
and I'm having trouble with the actual implementation of this.

My situations is, Bob is the reviewer (gatekeeper) and Joe is the new guy.
These two developers don't work anywhere close together (in proximity), they
are in completely different timezones - so Bob somehow needs access to Joe's
changes without Joe's computer being accesssable.

The first approach I've come up with is to treat the branches like SVN
branches.
Eg. A new remote (centrally hosted) branch is created for Joe to work from.
Joe creates a local checkout from his remote branch and commits his work to
it. Joe is then responsible for merging changes from main down to his local
checkout and committing them back to his remote branch.

When Joe is finished with his work and needs a review, Bob creates a clean
branch or checkout locally from main and merges Joe's changes down to it and
then reviews the changes (or uses diff to review them before merging them).
When Bob is satisfied and approves of the changes, he commits them locally,
then pushes the changes up to the main branch.

The problem with this approach is that we get the merges from trunk as part
of Joe's history - which isn't bad, but can distract Bob from Joe's real
changes.

To avoid the merges from trunk in the history, another approach is to have
Joe create a local branch of the main branch which he commits work to, and
he merges changes from the main branch regularly. When he is finished with
his work, he uses diff to create a patch which he then sends to Bob to
apply. After Bob approves of the changes, he applies the patch locally and
commits the changes upwards to the main branch. The problem with this
approach is that we lose all the history of Joe's commits in the main
branch.

Is there a way to allow Joe easy updates from main and also allow Bob easy
access to Joe's changes while preserving the history of changes - without
the merges from trunk as part of the history?

Thanks,
Eric
-- 
Learn from the past. Live in the present. Plan for the future.
11101000
http://www.townsfolkdesigns.com/blogs/elberry
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