IMP Manual
for IMP version 2.8.0
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We strongly recommend the use of source control (ideally git). However, if you have only a small change to make to IMP, such as a bug fix, and do not want to use source control, we'd rather get the fix than not! In this case, make a patch and email it to us or, better yet, open up an issue on GitHub with the patch as a gist.
See the FAQ for some resources on using git. For basic development of IMP, work in the default develop
branch and do the following:
git pull
to get latest 'upstream' changes into your copy (if you made a fork, you should also periodically sync it with the main repository. git imp update
is similar but will also show you any new entries from the changelog.git add <list_of_new_files>
and git commit -a -m "\<description of my recent changes\>"
. git makes it easy to undo, but only if you commit things to git!git push origin develop
periodically to store your changes on GitHub.If you are making a large change that, for example, touches a bunch of files or will not necessarily be finished before you would like to work on something else IMP related, use a feature
branch. Doing this also allows you to share the change with other people, before it is committed into develop
(e.g. to get them to check it doesn't break anything, or to test it as you are developing it). We provide tools, based on git flow, to facilitate this process.
git imp feature start feature_name
to start a new feature branch. This will open up up an editor where you can write a README.md
for the feature. The contents of the README.md
will be used to describe the branch as well as the final commit message for the branch when it is merged into develop
.git commit
, git add
etc.)git imp feature publish feature_name
to publish the branch to GitHub, if desired. (If you want to use a branch someone else published in this way, use git imp feature track feature_name
.)git imp feature pull origin
to get any new changes.git push origin feature/feature_name
to push any new changes to the branch to GitHub.When you are done and want to merge into develop
do
git imp feature finish <feature_name>
to merge into develop
, using the contents of the README.md
as the commit message. The README.md
file is removed before this is done.git push origin :feature/<feature_name>
to remove the branch from the GitHub repository if you shared it