Idea(s): standardize default config file/path in repo, and auto-init

[bmcdonnell-fb]

I'm thinking it makes more sense to store the git flow config in each repo, instead of having each developer manually stepping through the git flow init on each of their repos. That's more automated, less room for error, and would help keep teams aligned.

I suppose that's what the --file=path option to git flow init is supposed to be for? But, can you...?

1. Standardize the default path, within the repo, so that users don't need to specify it manually?
2. Auto init / obviate git flow init when the file is found?
3. Maybe even make this the default git flow init behavior?
   • If the file exists, do nothing, maybe just report the file/path found and its settings.
   • If it doesn't exist, then prompt like usual, save the settings there, and tell the user where it was stored.

I realize that (3) is a deviation from the original git-flow (and AVH), but I think it might be a big enough improvement that it's worth considering.

[bmcdonnell-fb]

Relevant documentation:
https://git-flow.sh/docs/configuration/

[Jaykul]

I definitely think the documentation could be a lot better around this -- the docs have several examples of how to create a shared configuration file, but zero examples of how to use that file!

The --file option just causes the configuration you're creating with the init command to be stored into that specific file, but it doesn't add a reference to your git config -- that's left as an exercise for the user.

What you actually want to do, is something like this:

git config --local include.path ../.gitflow
git flow init --preset=custom --main production --develop main --file=.gitflow

That will insert something like this into your .git/config file, such that the path is relative to the location of the config file:

[include]
  path = ../.gitflow

I think this is probably an enterprise-heavy feature, and most places where this is going to be used are going to dictate the same flow for every git repository, so you might just configure it as a --global option (in your user level ~/.gitconfig) so that it would affect everything:

git config --global include.path ~/.gitflow
git flow init --preset=custom --main production --develop main --file=~/.gitflow

Apart from improving the docs, I also think it would be worthwhile for git-flow to detect that the --file is not being referenced, and offer a hint to the user about how to fix that, because it's super confusing to do something like:

$ git flow init --defaults --file=.gitflow
Initializing git-flow with default settings
Created branch 'develop'
Git flow has been initialized
$ git flow overview
Error: git flow is not initialized (run 'git flow init' first)

[bmcdonnell-fb]

I'm a big fan of when everything "just works" upon checkout. To that end, the max value from my suggestions would be if no per-repo init is needed.

What you actually want to do, is something like this...

What I actually want is not to have to do anything other than install git-flow-next (once per machine), clone, and init submodules. With the git-flow config captured in the repo, then git-flow-next would automatically uses that config in that repo.