How I stack PRs in GitHub

README.txt

The following process is rather tedious but removes headaches from dealing with merge conflicts due to using a historically timed commit

When starting stacked work:
- git status # On pr1 branch
- git checkout main
- git checkout -b pr2.base # This will act as base for easy PR review and merge conflict resolution
- git checkout pr1 -p # Pull over all changes from pr1 into a single commit, including file deletion (git checkout -- . would miss this) (single commit removes noisy git history from PR)
- git commit -m "Single commit containing pr1 changes"
- git checkout -b pr2
- # Work on pr2

When opening PR:
- Open with pr2.base version as base and pr2 as branch in GitHub UI

When landing PR:
- Land pr1 first to main
- In PR, change base from pr2.base to main in GitHub UI (so it won't close the PR when we delete the base branch)
- Locally:
- git checkout main
- git pull # Update main to latest
- git checkout pr2.base
- git merge - # Merge last branch (main)
- git mergetool -y # All conflicts should resolve with main winning, since it's supposed to just be a collapsed historical commit
- git diff main # Sanity check pr2.base is 1:1 with main
- git checkout pr2
- git merge - # Merge last branch (pr2.base)
- git mergetool -y # as needed
- git diff origin/$(BRANCH) # Verify PR looks like it did before — $(BRANCH) comes from twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt
- git diff $(BRANCH).base # or main # Verify no unexpected changes
- git push --all 
- In GItHub UI, sanity check merge commits are nothing or minimal
- Locally again:
- git delete-branch $(BRANCH).base # git-delete-branch from git-extras
- # PR is now unstacked and with minimal merge conflict wrangling