[lmi] Branching to replace XSL-FO

[Greg Chicares]

Vadim--Working from your 20171004T1708Z email to me, I've done the following
(this seems like a good time to bring the discussion back onto the public list).
I believe it's what you recommended, but would you go over it in detail to make
sure I'm setting this up correctly before I take the next step and actually
start making changes, please?

First of all, this is the configuration of my actual working copy:

$git remote -v
origin  address@hidden:/srv/git/lmi.git (fetch)
origin  address@hidden:/srv/git/lmi.git (push)

$git config --get remote.origin.push
[no output; returns 1]

AIUI, 'remote.origin.push' needn't be changed, because I can always
specify a remote, e.g., 'git push origin gwc-no-xslfo'.

In the steps that follow, I'll add a remote, resulting in:

$git remote -v
origin  git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/lmi.git (fetch)
origin  git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/lmi.git (push)
vz-remote       https://github.com/vadz/lmi.git (fetch)
vz-remote       https://github.com/vadz/lmi.git (push)

For an assuredly safe trial run, I started this way:

$ pushd /tmp
$ git clone git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/lmi.git
$ cd lmi

just so that if anything goes wrong I can undo it without looking
up some new command.

Then I created my own branch and checked it out so that I can work on it:

$ git branch gwc-no-xslfo
$ git checkout gwc-no-xslfo
Switched to branch 'gwc-no-xslfo'

I added your github repository as a remote:

$ git remote add vz-remote https://github.com/vadz/lmi.git
$ git fetch vz-remote
remote: Counting objects: 36294, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (7960/7960), done.
remote: Total 36294 (delta 30764), reused 33768 (delta 28302), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (36294/36294), 7.35 MiB | 908.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (30764/30764), completed with 597 local objects.
>From https://github.com/vadz/lmi
...
* [new branch]          direct-pdf-gen-master      -> 
vz-remote/direct-pdf-gen-master
...
* [new tag]             direct-pdf-gen-beta1       -> direct-pdf-gen-beta1

AIUI, the 'github/direct-pdf-gen-master' branch is what I'll want to use.
I'll give it a different name for clarity:
$ git branch vz-no-xslfo vz-remote/direct-pdf-gen-master
Branch vz-no-xslfo set up to track remote branch direct-pdf-gen-master from 
vz-remote.

Now I can take a diff against the remote, either spelling it out:

$ git diff --stat gwc-no-xslfo vz-remote/direct-pdf-gen-master
 94 files changed, 7894 insertions(+), 2019 deletions(-)

...or (equivalent and easier) using the local names defined above:

$ git diff --stat gwc-no-xslfo vz-no-xslfo
 94 files changed, 7894 insertions(+), 2019 deletions(-)

The next step, which I haven't taken yet, would be to change something
in the 'gwc-no-xslfo' branch and push it with this not-yet-tested command:

$ git push origin gwc-no-xslfo

Later, while I'm working on the 'gwc-no-xslfo' branch, from time to time
I'll want to get any updates you've made to the remote. I think this
should be the command to do that, but I also thought it would work now,
yet it doesn't:

$ git merge --ff-only vz-remote/direct-pdf-gen-master
fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting.

Aside from that, does this look okay, so that I can repeat these commands
for my real repository instead of the disposable copy in /tmp ?