This seems like a really nice feature! At work I maintain an open source project but also have a private fork containing customizations just for our centre. This should make it very very easy to keep my private repo in sync with the public version.
BitBucket has been pushing a lot of nice features lately!
I think on the whole, github and BitBucket are very refreshing. They both come out with great ideas, and it fosters a very, very healthy space in which to provide services to users (source code hosting, versioning, and management).
It is also a space that every developer should become intimate with, and I think it's great that it's been brought to the forefront of software development like it has, especially for the visibility it has to new developers. When I started my bachelors in CS 5 years ago, I didn't have source control until my 2nd/3rd year, now it's something at the forefront of learning to program.
In my daily workflow, a feature branch is there on the server mostly for it's part of a already-sent pull request. So in this case, do a syncing does not make any sense.
For a feature branch from my local clone, I do love to sync with upstream/master as often as I can, but I can do it quickly and knowingly(rebase or merge) with command line.
So for me, thanks but no thanks.
But I do know a lot people use the remote feature branch as a tmp backup of the WIP feather branch, in this case, the fact that you can quickly sync with upstream/master does help, but what if you click "sync branch" and merge conflicts happen?
From the blog post: without ever needing to go to the command line. So I think their goal is to make things even easier for users that have trouble (or don't like) the command line.
Its nice to see Bitbucket moving away from simply copying the design and featureset of Github. The newer design and features like this are very welcome.
As a graduate student, I prefer bitbucket to github for maintaining my codebase for course projects and homework assignments, for the simple reason that it provides free private repositories.
For the sake of maintaining academic integrity, making my course projects and assignments public is not recommended till the course ends.
I use Bitbucket (because it allows for private projects, I use in the company), and this feature sounds very interesting.
It is great when you can just fork a thing, and keep working on it, and Bitbucket keeps it synced for you, without you needing to remember to pull every day.
On an unrelated note, I think it's pretty funny you can sign in to Bitbucket using your Github account :) Reminds me of how I signed into Bitbucket for years using my Launchpad OpenID :D
Can someone guide me on how you'd normally sync feature branches?
If you have already pushed the feature branch, doesn't rebasing mess things up because the parent and hence the hash of the commits in that branch change?
My feature branches get outdated compared to the master and I'd like to sync them with master and make it merge-ready so I can create a pull request and someone can seamlessly merge it in.
Yes, I usually keep the feature branch on my machine and rebase master on to it every day. I would also like to know how to push it while continually rebasing it on top of master.
Neither is fork or pull request something that you can't do easily without Bitbucket and Github, but people still use them mainly because those two sites make it easier for them to fork a project and keep the fork up to date. I guess it's all about convenience, and time will tell if people will use it.
Bitbucket has the potential to become much better than GitHub - as long as they keep filling feature holes like these - since they're not tied to just one DCVS.
For the first time, I feel compelled to set some time aside and test the service throughout. GitHub stability/availability has been lacking lately, and a better bug tracker would be useful.
It can't possibly be rebasing since the changesets on BitBucket are "published" in HG parlance and cannot be rewritten. I'm assuming it does simple merges.
BitBucket has been pushing a lot of nice features lately!