git sync

Utility script that synchronizes a local repository with all remotes:

• fetches all remotes
• fast-forwards all local branches that have a remote upstream
• pushes upstream changes to the default push remote
• fast-forwards branches associated with merged PRs to the merge commit

Not all git configuration is taken into account; please open an issue if this causes problems.

Details

As an example, suppose you have a local repository with a main branch, your main branch has upstream/main as its upstream, and your remote.pushdefault config is origin. What happens when you run git sync?

If you are currently working on main, it will use git pull --all to fetch all remotes and update main in a single step; otherwise, it will run git fetch --all, then use git fetch . upstream/main:main to fast-forward in changes. Finally, in both cases it will run git push origin main.

Merged PRs

Git understands merge commits and handles them nicely. For instance, if a branch F is merged to main with a merge commit, the git command git branch -d F will succeed without warning, as it knows F is merged to main. If you have further work on a child branch, git pull will know to drop any merged commits automatically.

Squash commits break this model, as they deliberately do not record the information git needs to determine that a branch commit is in the history of main. This means having to do branch -D and risking mistakenly deleting unmerged commits if you have misremembered which branches have merged.

If you have remote.pushdefault set and $GITHUB_TOKEN in your environment, git sync will query the last 50 PRs from each remote, and if it finds a merge commit for a local branch, will fast-forward that branch to the merge commit. This gives git enough information to reenable the safer workflows.

Installing

To install, use pipx:

pip install pipx
python -m pipx ensurepath  # Permanently updates your $PATH
pipx install git+https://github.com/alicederyn/git-sync.git