This is a tutorial on how to use Google's repo
version control tool, as many people seem to have trouble getting a handle on its proper operation, and most of the documentation doesn't seem all that helpful in terms of clarification. For this tutorial, we'll be using AGL (Automotive Grade Linux) as an example.
Links for AGL
abandon Permanently abandon a development branch branch View current topic branches branches View current topic branches checkout Checkout a branch for development cherry-pick Cherry-pick a change. diff Show changes between commit and working tree diffmanifests Manifest diff utility download Download and checkout a change gitc-delete Delete a GITC Client. gitc-init Initialize a GITC Client. grep Print lines matching a pattern info Get info on the manifest branch, current branch or unmerged branches init Initialize repo in the current directory list List projects and their associated directories overview Display overview of unmerged project branches prune Prune (delete) already merged topics rebase Rebase local branches on upstream branch smartsync Update working tree to the latest known good revision stage Stage file(s) for commit start Start a new branch for development status Show the working tree status sync Update working tree to the latest revision upload Upload changes for code review
Perhaps the most confusing property of repo
is that there are, conceptually, two types of repo
command.
The first kind of repo
is not the full command; rather, it is a simplified version called the tool launcher; this is the single-executable command you download initially, and make sure is part of your search path so that when you invoke repo
, that is the command that is located and executed. It's common to install that in your personal ~/bin
directory, which is almost always already part of your search path.
Once you start working with repo
and start initializing repositories, each and every repository will, as part of being initialized, have installed within it the full version of repo
, which supports all of the subcommands. However, even as you're working with repo
, you always, always, always invoke the initial tool launcher which, as soon as it realizes it's being run in the context of an actual repository, will hand off control to that repo's full version.
In other words, even though every single repo
repository you initialize gets its own copy of the full version of the command, you should never run that full version directly – you always invoke the simpler, tool launcher version, which will take it from there.
As explained above, install the launcher tool version of repo
in any directory that is on your search path, such as:
$ curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo $ chmod +x ~/bin/repo
Once again, this is not the full version of the command; its job is to simply initialize new repositories when you run repo init
, then in each of those repositories install the full version of the command, which will be used from then on.
After creating a new directory:
$ mkdir agl_dir $ cd agl_dir
initialize a new (in this case, AGL) repo directory:
$ repo init -u https://gerrit.automotivelinux.org/gerrit/AGL/AGL-repo
and note carefully what that accomplished.
The repo
command you ran in the above command was the launcher tool in your home directory, and the end result is to populate your current directory with, well:
$ ls -AF .repo/ $
If you examine that .repo
directory, you'll see simply manifest files and directories for AGL, as well as a repo
directory which contains, among other things, the repo
command that will be used for subsequent operations:
$ ls -F repo color.py git_config.py MANIFEST.in __pycache__/ setup.py* command.py gitc_utils.py manifest_xml.py pyversion.py subcmds/ docs/ git_refs.py pager.py README.md SUBMITTING_PATCHES.md editor.py git_ssh* platform_utils.py release/ tests/ error.py hooks/ platform_utils_win32.py repo* tox.ini event_log.py LICENSE progress.py repo_trace.py wrapper.py git_command.py main.py* project.py run_tests*