Pull Requests, Code Reviews & Git Rebase
If you've already learned Git commits, branching, and merging, you've mastered the mechanics of version control. But knowing Git alone doesn't make you effective on a real engineering team. In this article, we'll cover: What Pull Requests (PRs) actually are How professional code reviews work Why .gitignore is essential The dangers of committing secrets When to use git merge vs git rebase These…
Pull Requests (PRs) and code reviews are essential practices for transforming a personal project into a professional software project. A PR is a request made through platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, notifying other developers to review and merge the changes from one branch into another. A successful PR contains more than just code; it includes a visual diff of changes, an explanation of why the changes were made, and a discussion area where reviewers can ask questions, suggest improvements, and request modifications.
Committing secrets into a repository can have disastrous consequences, as these secrets can be accessed by anyone with access to the repository history. To prevent this, developers should follow best practices such as using environment variables instead of hardcoding credentials, never committing secrets in the first place, and regularly checking the repository for any accidentally committed secrets using tools like dedicated security scanners.
When it comes to version control, Git offers two main methods for merging changes: git merge and git rebase. While merging creates a new commit that combines the histories of both branches, rebasing applies the current set of commits on top of the latest version of another branch, creating a cleaner and more linear project history.
Rebasing is especially useful when working on a feature branch that needs to be updated with the latest changes from the main branch, as it ensures a more straightforward and easier to follow commit history.
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