Comment by LeafStorm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeafStorm | Hacker News Reader

The problem with using Git push to deploy is that when you're first setting up your deployment, if you make a mistake in the settings, you can't amend the commit to fix it, because it's already been pushed - so the mistake stays there for all eternity. And if you try to fix it and your fix doesn't work, that's another bad commit.

I deployed my first project to Heroku a few weeks ago, and now my project history has a handful of permanently unremovable junk commits, which I made solely to force Heroku to rebuild my app.

Here is how I work on heroku, use a branch, rebase and force push to clean your commit logs:

    git checkout -b heroku-setup
    # make some commits
    git push -u heroku heroku-setup:master
    # oops, something was wrong
    # make some more commits
    git push
    # ok, everything is working
    git rebase -i origin/master
    # squash/remove commits
    git push -f
    # test one last time
    git checkout master
    git merge --no-ff heroku-setup
    git push

You can rewrite history. This is a bad idea if other people are collaborating on your project, as the new history will be mismatched with theirs. It can still be done safely when properly collaborated, or if you're alone just go for it.

http://gitready.com/intermediate/2009/01/31/intro-to-rebase....

Just use git push -f. Or just push from a branch.

So long as the target you are deploying too can't also get pulled from in the mean time you can amend commits all you want and push as often or as little as you want.

There is no need for junk commits.

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