GIT Examples

Contributing Code to PX4

Adding a feature to PX4 follows a defined workflow. In order to share your contributions on PX4, you can follow this example.

• Sign up for github if you haven't already

• Fork the PX4-Autopilot repo (see here)

• Clone your forked repository to your local computer

  cd ~/wherever/
  git clone https://github.com/<your git name>/PX4-Autopilot.git

• Go into the new directory, initialize and update the submodules, and add the original upstream PX4-Autopilot

  cd PX4-Autopilot
  git submodule update --init --recursive
  git remote add upstream https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot.git

• You should have now two remote repositories: One repository is called upstream that points to PX4/PX4-Autopilot, and one repository origin that points to your forked copy of the PX4 repository.

• This can be checked with the following command:

  git remote -v

• Make the changes that you want to add to the current main.

• Create a new branch with a meaningful name that represents your feature

  git checkout -b <your feature branch name>

  you can use the command git branch to make sure you're on the right branch.

• Add your changes that you want to be part of the commit by adding the respective files

  git add <file name>

  If you prefer having a GUI to add your files see Gitk or git add -p.

• Commit the added files with a meaningful message explaining your changes

  git commit -m "<your commit message>"

  For a good commit message, please refer to Contributing section.

• Some time might have passed and the upstream main has changed. PX4 prefers a linear commit history and uses git rebase. To include the newest changes from upstream in your local branch, switch to your main branch

  git checkout main

  Then pull the newest commits from upstream main

  git pull upstream main

  Now your local main is up to date. Switch back to your feature branch and rebase on your updated main

  git checkout <your feature branch name>
  git rebase main

• Now you can push your local commits to your forked repository

  git push origin <your feature branch name>

• You can verify that the push was successful by going to your forked repository in your browser: https://github.com/<your git name>/PX4-Autopilot.git

  There you should see the message that a new branch has been pushed to your forked repository.

• Now it's time to create a pull request (PR). On the right hand side of the "new branch message" (see one step before), you should see a green button saying "Compare & Create Pull Request". Then it should list your changes and you can (must) add a meaningful title (in case of a one commit PR, it's usually the commit message) and message (explain what you did for what reason. Check other pull requests for comparison)

• You're done! Responsible members of PX4 will now have a look at your contribution and decide if they want to integrate it. Check if they have questions on your changes every once in a while.

Changing Source Trees

We recommend using PX4 make commands to switch between source code branches. This saves you having to remember the commands to update submodules and clean up build artifacts (build files that are not removed will result in "untracked files" errors after the switch).

To switch between branches:

1. Clean up the current branch, de-initializing submodule and removing all build artifacts:

   make clean
   make distclean

2. Switch to a new branch or tag (here we first fetch the fictional branch "PR_test_branch" from the upstream remote):

   git fetch upstream PR_test_branch
   git checkout PR_test_branch

3. Get the submodules for the new branch:

   make submodulesclean

Get a Specific Release

Specific PX4 point releases are made as tags of the release branches, and are named using the format v<release>. These are listed on Github here (or you can query all tags using git tag -l).

To get the source code for a specific older release (tag):

1. Clone the PX4-Autopilot repo and navigate into PX4-Autopilot directory:

   git clone https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot.git
   cd PX4-Autopilot

   :::note You can reuse an existing repo rather than cloning a new one. In this case clean the build environment (see changing source trees):

   make clean
   make distclean

   :::

2. Checkout code for particular tag (e.g. for tag v1.13.0-beta2)

   git checkout v1.13.0-beta2

3. Update submodules:

   make submodulesclean

Get a Release Branch

Releases branches are branched of main, and used to backport necessary changes from main into a release. The branches are named using the format release/<release_number> (e.g. release/v1.13). The are listed here.

To get a release branch:

• Clone the PX4-Autopilot repo and navigate into PX4-Autopilot directory:

  git clone https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot.git
  cd PX4-Autopilot

  :::note You can reuse an existing repo rather than cloning a new one. In this case clean the build environment (see changing source trees):

  make clean
  make distclean

  :::

• Fetch the desired release branch. For example, assuming you want the source for PX4 v1.13:

  git fetch origin release/1.13

• Checkout the code for the branch

  git checkout release/1.13

• Update submodules:

  make submodulesclean

Update Submodule

There are several ways to update a submodule. Either you clone the repository or you go in the submodule directory and follow the same procedure as in Contributing code to PX4.

Do a PR for a submodule update

This is required after you have done a PR for a submodule X repository and the bug-fix / feature-add is in the current main of submodule X. Since the Firmware still points to a commit before your update, a submodule pull request is required such that the submodule used by the Firmware points to the newest commit.

cd Firmware

• Make a new branch that describes the fix / feature for the submodule update:

  git checkout -b pr-some-fix

• Go to submodule subdirectory

  cd <path to submodule>

• PX4 submodule might not necessarily point to the newest commit. Therefore, first checkout main and pull the newest upstream code.

  git checkout main
  git pull upstream main

• Go back to Firmware directory, and as usual add, commit and push the changes.

  cd -
  git add <path to submodule>
  git commit -m "Update submodule to include ..."
  git push upstream pr-some-fix

Checkout pull requests

You can test someone's pull request (changes are not yet merged) even if the branch to merge only exists on the fork from that person. Do the following:

git fetch upstream  pull/<PR ID>/head:<branch name>

PR ID is the number right next to the PR's title (without the #) and the <branch name> can also be found right below the PR ID, e.g. <the other persons git name>:<branch name>. After that you can see the newly created branch locally with

git branch

Then switch to that branch

git checkout <branch name>

Common pitfalls

Force push to forked repository

After having done the first PR, people from the PX4 community will review your changes. In most cases this means that you have to fix your local branch according to the review. After changing the files locally, the feature branch needs to be rebased again with the most recent upstream/main. However, after the rebase, it is no longer possible to push the feature branch to your forked repository directly, but instead you need to use a force push:

git push --force-with-lease origin <your feature branch name>

Rebase merge conflicts

If a conflict occurs during a git rebase, please refer to this guide.

Pull merge conflicts

If a conflict occurs during a git pull, please refer to this guide.

Build error due to git tags out of date

The build error Error: PX4 version too low, expected at least vx.x.x occurs if git tags are out of date.

This can be solved by fetching the upstream repository tags:

git fetch upstream --tags