Keeping a repository updated with template repo changes

[haani-niyaz]

It is expected that this template repo will undergo continuous improvement changes and teams should be able to keep their repos updated as this happens. There is however some confusion around how teams are expected to keep their repositories updated in the most seamless way.

It is also evident that there some are cases with undesirable effects:

When you create a new branch which includes the template repo git commits and it has template repo references with the issue number, Github will associate the commit to the matching project repo issues (if it exists with the same issue number).

Example:

Acceptance Criteria

• Provide easy instructions to raise a PR with the latest changes from the template repo
• Ensure only changes from main branch or a tag is fetched if the template repo is added as another origin to the project repo
• The PR branch pushed to Github should not include the template repo commit history (to resolve the issue described above)

[haani-niyaz]

Tested instructions courtesy of @ldmi3i:

Run the following within your git repo:

1. Add remote git remote add template https://github.com/rog-golang-buddies/golang-template-repository.git
2. Fetch changes git fetch template main
3. Create an "update" branch from your repo's main as git checkout -b update-from-template main
4. Merge update to single commit git merge --squash template/main --allow-unrelated-histories
5. Resolve conflicts
6. Commit changes git commit -m 'chore(go-template): Updates from template'
7. Push branch and create PR to main as usual

The --squash in step 4 is vital to circumvent the issues highlighted above.