# Your Fork's Master: Update Often, Commit Never It is highly recommended for QMK development, regardless of what is being done or where, to keep your `master` branch updated, but ***never*** commit to it. Instead, do all your changes in a development branch and issue pull requests from your branches when you're developing. To reduce the chances of merge conflicts — instances where two or more users have edited the same part of a file concurrently — keep your `master` branch relatively up-to-date, and start any new developments by creating a new branch. ## Updating your master branch To keep your `master` branch updated, it is recommended to add the QMK Firmware repository ("repo") as a remote repository in git. To do this, open your Git command line interface and enter: ``` git remote add upstream https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware.git ``` ?> The name `upstream` is arbitrary, but a common convention; you can give the QMK remote any name that suits you. Git's `remote` command uses the syntax `git remote add `, `` being shorthand for the remote repo. This name can be used with many Git commands, including but not limited to `fetch`, `pull` and `push`, to specify the remote repo on which to act. To verify that the repository has been added, run `git remote -v`, which should return the following: ``` $ git remote -v origin https://github.com//qmk_firmware.git (fetch) origin https://github.com//qmk_firmware.git (push) upstream https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware.git (fetch) upstream https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware.git (push) ``` Now that this is done, you can check for updates to the repo by running `git fetch upstream`. This retrieves the branches and tags — collectively referred to as "refs" — from the QMK repo, which now has the nickname `upstream`. We can now compare the data on our fork `origin` to that held by QMK. To update your fork's master, run the following, hitting the Enter key after each line: ``` git checkout master git fetch upstream git pull upstream master git push origin master ``` This switches you to your `master` branch, retrieves the refs from the QMK repo, downloads the current QMK `master` branch to your computer, and then uploads it to your fork. ## Making Changes :id=making-changes To make changes, create a new branch by entering: ``` git checkout -b dev_branch git push --set-upstream origin dev_branch ``` This creates a new branch named `dev_branch`, checks it out, and then saves the new branch to your fork. The `--set-upstream` argument tells git to use your fork and the `dev_branch` branch every time you use `git push` or `git pull` from this branch. It only needs to be used on the first push; after that, you can safely use `git push` or `git pull`, without the rest of the arguments. ?> With `git push`, you can use `-u` in place of `--set-upstream` — `-u` is an alias for `--set-upstream`. You can name your branch nearly anything you want, though it is recommended to name it something related to the changes you are going to make. By default `git checkout -b` will base your new branch on the branch that is currently checked out. You can base your new branch on an existing branch that is not checked out by adding the name of the existing branch to the command: ``` git checkout -b dev_branch master ``` Now that you have a development branch, open your text editor and make whatever changes you need to make. It is recommended to make many small commits to your branch; that way, any change that causes issues can be more easily traced and undone if needed. To make your changes, edit and save any files that need to be updated, add them to Git's *staging area*, and then commit them to your branch: ``` git add path/to/updated_file git commit -m "My commit message." ``` `git add` adds files that have been changed to Git's *staging area*, which is Git's "loading zone." This contains the changes that are going to be *committed* by `git commit`, which saves the changes to the repo. Use descriptive commit messages so you can know what was changed at a glance. ?> If you've changed multiple files, you can use `git add -- path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...` to add all your desired files. ## Publishing Your Changes The last step is to push your changes to your fork. To do this, enter `git push`. Git will then publish the current state of `dev_branch` to your fork. 1'>21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434