The other day, I added experimental support for checkin directly from git-tfs to tfs. (Nate added an interactive version of checkin, too.) It doesn’t feel quite complete yet, and I haven’t decided which way to take it.

The main thing that’s missing is a way to tie the TFS checkin to the git branch. There are a few options that I’ve come up with for how to do this: dcommit, merge in TFS, or merge back to the git branch.

Dcommit would be similar to dcommit in git-svn, where the git commits are checked in to TFS one at a time, effectively rebasing the git branch onto the end of the TFS branch.

Merging in TFS doesn’t mean letting TFS do merges, but rather it means that git tfs checkin would fetch up to the new TFS commit, and give it two parents.

T1 --- T2 --- T3 --- X
   \                /
     G1 --- G2 -- G3

T1 is the base TFS changeset. G* are commits in git. T2 and T3 are commits made in TFS before the git branch is checked in to TFS. X is the TFS changeset created by git-tfs, with parents T3 and G3.

Merging back to the git branch is similar to merging in TFS, but with the merge commit in a different place:

T1 --- T2 --- T3 --- T4
   \                    \
     G1 --- G2 --- G3 -- X

Here, T4 is the new changeset created by git-tfs, and a merge commit is created with G3’s tree and parents G3 and T4.

The thing I like about dcommit is that it captures everything, if you want. It seems like it would be potentially problematic, in that it would be pretty slow and more error prone. Like rebase, it removes commits from history, which I’m a little wary of. Merging on the TFS branch is conceptually very nice, but it breaks the ability to refetch the exact same TFS history (given the same clone configuration). It also might not be as convenient for managing a git master that parallels the TFS mainline, because the merge won’t be available on the git branch. I’m not very well-versed in the mechanics of git’s merging awesomeness, so this might be a moot point, but it seems like the “merge in git” option would provide a better workflow.

If you have any thoughts, please leave a comment. I’m open to suggestions.

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