Source code management

The main source code management tool for the FreeCAD project is Git, which can be easily installed in most operating systems from a package manager or directly from Git's website. You are advised to become familiar with Git before working with the FreeCAD source code directly. Visit the Git documentation page for the reference manual as well as tutorials to learn to use the system. The present article explains how to use Git with FreeCAD.

While Git is primarily a terminal application, there are many graphical clients for it which facilitate working with branches, applying patches, and submitting pull requests to a master branch. Examples include git-cola, gitg, and GitKraken. Please see Developing FreeCAD with GitKraken for a cursory introduction to this tool.

Source code access
Everybody can access and get a copy of the FreeCAD source code, but only the FreeCAD project managers have write access to it. You can get a copy of the code, study it and modify it as you wish. If you want your changes to be included in the official source code, you need to perform a pull request against the master repository so that your modifications can be reviewed by one of the managers.

If your source code changes are significant, you are advised to explain them in the pull request section of the FreeCAD forum.

Official GitHub repository
The FreeCAD source code is hosted in Github, https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD

In order to contribute code, you need to have a GitHub account.

Setting your git username
Developers should commit code to their personal repository using their GitHub username. If that is not already set globally, you can set it locally for the current Git repository like this:

Where represents your full name or nickname, used to identify the author of a particular commit, and  indicates your GitHub username.

You can now use some combination of and  to create one or more commits in your local repository.

Remote repositories
Please read What is the difference between origin and upstream on GitHub? (Stackoverflow) to help you understand the difference between and  in the context of Git. This section explains how to set the correct repositories for development. Essentially:
 * is your personal fork of the official FreeCAD repository, that is,
 * is the official FreeCAD repository, that is, https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD

This distinction is important, as you should push code to your own copy of the repository first, before pushing those changes to the official repository. If you clone from the repository, the  remote repository will point to the official repository. If you accidentally did this, you can use to change the name of this remote to.

Based on the above, there are two ways to setup your Git development environment:
 * 1st Method: Fork on GitHub and clone your fork locally
 * 2nd Method: Clone FreeCAD directly to your local machine

We recommend the 1st method because it's one step faster.

1st Method: Fork on GitHub and clone your fork locally
First you will fork the FreeCAD repository in GitHub, then clone this personal fork to your computer, and finally set the repository.
 * Log in to your GitHub account.
 * Go to the official FreeCAD repository: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD
 * In the top right of the page press the "Fork" button. This will create a personal copy of the FreeCAD repository under your GitHub username:
 * On your machine, clone your newly created FreeCAD fork. It will be created inside a directory.


 * Once the download is complete, enter the new source directory and set the repository.


 * Confirm your remote repositories with ; the output should be similar to this


 * Now development can begin. See Git Development Process.

2nd Method: Clone FreeCAD directly to your local machine
First you will fork the FreeCAD repository in GitHub, however, you will clone the original FreeCAD repository to your local machine, and then alter your remotes via the terminal.
 * Log in to your GitHub account.
 * Go to the official FreeCAD repository: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD
 * In the top right of the page press the "Fork" button. This will create a personal copy of the FreeCAD repository under your GitHub username:
 * Clone the original FreeCAD repository. It will be created inside a directory.


 * Once the download is complete, enter the new source directory and set the repository.


 * Then set up the repository.


 * Confirm your remote repositories with ; the output should be similar to this


 * Now development can begin. See Git Development Process.

Branching
Best practices recommend creating a new branch whenever you want to work on a new feature. Creating a new branch is done in two steps, first your create the branch, and then you switch to it:

Alternatively, use a single instruction:

To see the branches in your project and the current branch you are using type

Committing
Once you are inside a new branch, edit the source files that you want. When you are ready to commit the changes issue

Unlike SVN, you need to specifically tell which files to commit; use the option to commit changes in all files that were changed. Your text editor will open to allow you to write a commit message.

Writing good commit messages
You should try to work in small chunks. If you cannot summarize your changes in one sentence, then it has probably been too long since you have made a commit.

For big changes, it is important that you have helpful and useful descriptions of your work. FreeCAD has adopted a format mentioned in book Pro Git.

If you are doing a lot of related work in a branch, you should make as many commits as it makes sense (see a forum post). When you want to merge those changes into the master branch, you should issue

to see the individual commit messages. Then you can build a high quality commit message to use for the merge commit message.

When you merge to master use the option and commit with your quality commit message. This will allow you to be very liberal with your commits and help to provide a good level of detail in commit messages without so many distinct descriptions.

Pushing your work to your GitHub repository
After you've correctly committed modifications to your local branch in your computer, you can push this branch to your remote git server, that is,. This opens your branch to the public online, and allows other developers to review and integrate this branch into the official FreeCAD master branch.

Please read Pushing commits to a remote repository for more information.

Check out GitHub Requests Locally
https://gist.github.com/piscisaureus/3342247

Resolving Merge Conflicts

 * git-scm explanation on how conflicts are presented
 * GitHub article on resolving merge conflicts via the command-line
 * Customize your preferred merge tool when you encounter a git conflict.

Applying patches via git
Git has the capability to merge patches/diffs. To read more about this read the following reference: https://www.drupal.org/node/1399218 git apply [patch-name].patch

Apply a patch via curl
A very handy and powerful feature of git and the command line is the ability to quickly test patches all through the terminal. curl -O https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/commit/[patch-name].patch git apply [patch-name].patch or alternatively, using bash pipes you can make a sweet 1-liner: curl https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/commit/c476589652a0f67b544735740e20ff702e8d0621.patch | git apply -


 * Useful tip: Just add .diff or .patch at the end of the URL for a GitHub commit page, Pull Request, or Compare View and it'll show you theplaintext view of that page. Example:
 * Regular GitHub page: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/commit/c476589652a0f67b544735740e20ff702e8d0621
 * 'Diffed' GitHub page: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/commit/c476589652a0f67b544735740e20ff702e8d0621.diff
 * 'Patched' GitHub page: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/commit/c476589652a0f67b544735740e20ff702e8d0621.patch

Creating patches from git
There are times when one may need to create a patch instead of submitting a PR. The following workflow explains how to do this:  Make sure you are in the correct branch (i.e. not the master branch) by checking with git branch -v  Create the patch: we do this by using the git format-patch command which we patch against the master branch and redirect to STDOUT. We create the patch in the directory outside of the source build (in order not to pollute the source dir itself, this is optional as you can decide the location wherever you want the patch to be created) git format-patch master --stdout > ../patch.name.patch  Another method is to use git format-patch HEAD^ or git format-patch HEAD~1 The ^ or 1 can be changed to number of commits that should be covered i.e.: ^^^ or ~3. git format-patch HEAD^  It will create a patch or series of patches with file name format XXXX-commit-message.patch. An example: 0001-fix-ViewProjMatrix-getProjectionMatrix.patch



Reversing a patch in git
If you've followed the instructions above and then have a change of heart about using the patch, you can quickly reverse it using: git apply -R path/file.patch or another way is to use: git checkout -f which will remove non-committed changes to the branch

Stashing git commits
Say you're working on a branch and you find yourself making some modification to the source that is out of the scope of your current branch in other words it would be better to add certain commits to a whole other branch and submit it instead of the current one. This is where the git stash command can be very useful. The git stash command can help you to (temporarily but safely) store your uncommitted local changes. git stash Then in the future when you want to use these commits you can git stash apply or git stash pop pop will delete the stash If you have multiple stashes you can git stash list To read more about what other functions you can use checkout https://medium.freecodecamp.org/useful-tricks-you-might-not-know-about-git-stash-e8a9490f0a1a

Latest revision number
Inside your cloned git directory type

Or browse the repository in GitHub and read the amount of commits FreeCAD the master branch is at.

Revision number of a specific commit hash and vice versa

 * some forum topics in this regard:
 * https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=26673
 * https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=5308
 * https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=12883&p=103207#p103203
 * https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=31118

Revision number in FreeCAD's interface
The version number that appears in is defined in, which is created at compile time when the  tool is run. Read Extract version number from git source for more information.

See the compile on Unix page for the full information on compiling FreeCAD.

Alternative repositories
The beauty of git is that everybody can clone a project, and start modifying the code. Several frequent collaborators of the FreeCAD project have their own git repository, where they build up their work before it is ready to be included in the official source code, or simply where they experiment new ideas. In certain cases, you might want to clone your FreeCAD code from one of these, instead of the official repos, to benefit from the changes their users did.

Be warned, though, that this is at your own risk, and only the official repository above is fully guaranteed to work and contain clean code.

It is also possible to attach several remote repositories to a same local FreeCAD git code, using the "git remote" command. This is useful to keep in sync with the master code branch, but keep an eye on the work of different developers.

Using git in a Graphical User Interface

 * Developing FreeCAD with GitKraken