Syncing and merging come to Bitbucket

[randlet]

This seems like a really nice feature! At work I maintain an open source project but also have a private fork containing customizations just for our centre. This should make it very very easy to keep my private repo in sync with the public version.

BitBucket has been pushing a lot of nice features lately!

[prawks]

I think on the whole, github and BitBucket are very refreshing. They both come out with great ideas, and it fosters a very, very healthy space in which to provide services to users (source code hosting, versioning, and management).

It is also a space that every developer should become intimate with, and I think it's great that it's been brought to the forefront of software development like it has, especially for the visibility it has to new developers. When I started my bachelors in CS 5 years ago, I didn't have source control until my 2nd/3rd year, now it's something at the forefront of learning to program.

[happypeter]

In my daily workflow, a feature branch is there on the server mostly for it's part of a already-sent pull request. So in this case, do a syncing does not make any sense.

For a feature branch from my local clone, I do love to sync with upstream/master as often as I can, but I can do it quickly and knowingly(rebase or merge) with command line.

So for me, thanks but no thanks.

But I do know a lot people use the remote feature branch as a tmp backup of the WIP feather branch, in this case, the fact that you can quickly sync with upstream/master does help, but what if you click "sync branch" and merge conflicts happen?

[GhotiFish]

I'm a bit green to the workflow my self, but I agree with you, this doesn't seem to add anything.

Why is having the server doing the merge advantageous to doing the merge locally?

[balac]

Its nice to see Bitbucket moving away from simply copying the design and featureset of Github. The newer design and features like this are very welcome.

[Jagat]

As a graduate student, I prefer bitbucket to github for maintaining my codebase for course projects and homework assignments, for the simple reason that it provides free private repositories. For the sake of maintaining academic integrity, making my course projects and assignments public is not recommended till the course ends.

[aspir]

It may not be enough, but GitHub does provide free private repos for students -- https://github.com/edu

[speeder]

I use Bitbucket (because it allows for private projects, I use in the company), and this feature sounds very interesting.

It is great when you can just fork a thing, and keep working on it, and Bitbucket keeps it synced for you, without you needing to remember to pull every day.

[lvh]

I'm not sure how this works. Does it rebase?

On an unrelated note, I think it's pretty funny you can sign in to Bitbucket using your Github account :) Reminds me of how I signed into Bitbucket for years using my Launchpad OpenID :D

[borplk]

Can someone guide me on how you'd normally sync feature branches?

If you have already pushed the feature branch, doesn't rebasing mess things up because the parent and hence the hash of the commits in that branch change?

My feature branches get outdated compared to the master and I'd like to sync them with master and make it merge-ready so I can create a pull request and someone can seamlessly merge it in.

[speg]

Yes, I usually keep the feature branch on my machine and rebase master on to it every day. I would also like to know how to push it while continually rebasing it on top of master.

[tunnuz]

For what it's worth, I think that the service Bitbucket.org is offering is great and these guys are doing a really good job.

[qwerta]

I feel my next project will be hosted on Bitbucket rather than github :-)

First they removed downloads and now they do not have this useful feature :-)

[shuzchen]

Github also does not have side-by-side diffs, and lacks hg support. I do wish Bitbucket would make a gist ripoff though.

[atechie]

Downloads is a valid missing (or rather removed) feature, but as others have pointed out, this feature at core is not very different from rebase.

[IgorPartola]

Glad that BitBucket is developing original features. It's a great alternative to GitHub especially since the pricing is so much saner.

[hcarvalhoalves]

Bitbucket has the potential to become much better than GitHub - as long as they keep filling feature holes like these - since they're not tied to just one DCVS.

For the first time, I feel compelled to set some time aside and test the service throughout. GitHub stability/availability has been lacking lately, and a better bug tracker would be useful.

[holman]

> since they're not tied to just one DCVS.

Just for the record, neither is GitHub. :) We've supported Subversion for almost three years now.

[anton_gogolev]

It can't possibly be rebasing since the changesets on BitBucket are "published" in HG parlance and cannot be rewritten. I'm assuming it does simple merges.

[deepak-kumar]

Wow, tried it and I am already liking this feature. Always helps to know where my fork stands w.r.t. parent repo. Way to go Bitbucket, keep it coming!