Enabling Graphite Workflow in Tower

Tower provides seamless integration with Graphite, allowing you to easily enable and configure the Graphite workflow for your repositories.

Graphite CLI Integration
Tower's Graphite integration uses the Graphite CLI under the hood. If you're familiar with Graphite CLI commands, you'll find that Tower's actions correspond directly to those commands, providing a graphical interface for the same operations.

For Repositories Not Using Graphite Yet

If your repository isn't already configured for Graphite, you can enable it through Tower's workflow toolbar:

1. Open your repository in Tower
2. Click the Workflow toolbar icon in the top toolbar
3. A workflow chooser dialog will appear
4. Select the Graphite workflow option
5. Configure your settings in the dialog. You can set your trunk branch (typically main or master), which is the main branch that all stacked branches will eventually merge into. You'll also need to provide your Graphite Auth Token for authentication. If you haven't set up the Graphite binary yet, the dialog will prompt you to specify its location.
6. Click Configure to enable Graphite for this repository

Tower will initialize your repository with Graphite by running the initialization command, which sets up all necessary configurations. Once complete, your repository will be fully configured and ready for working with Graphite's stacked branch workflow.

For Existing Graphite Repositories

If your repository is already configured for Graphite, Tower will automatically detect this configuration:

1. Open your repository in Tower
2. You'll notice the Workflow toolbar button shows a Graphite icon with an exclamation mark
3. Click the Workflow toolbar button to open the workflow chooser dialog
4. Click Activate Workflow to start using Graphite in Tower with the existing configuration

Accessing Graphite Features After Enabling

Once Graphite is enabled for a repository, you'll notice several changes in Tower's interface. The Workflow toolbar button will provide quick access to all Graphite actions, making it easy to perform common operations. You'll also find Graphite actions conveniently available through the main menu under the Workflow section, as well as in branch context menus when you right-click on branches.

Additionally, Tower will display your stacked branches in a clear hierarchical order within the sidebar, helping you visualize the relationships between your changes.

Graphite Actions
Graphite actions in Tower are marked with a special icon in front of menu items or buttons. This icon indicates that a Graphite CLI action will be invoked when selected.

When you check out a Graphite branch, the standard Pull and Push toolbar items will be replaced with Graphite's equivalents: gt get and gt submit. This ensures that you're using the appropriate Graphite commands for synchronizing your stacked branches instead of the standard Git operations. This is indicated by a small Graphite badge icon on the toolbar items.

Opening the Graphite Dashboard

For a comprehensive view of your stacked branches and pull requests, you can access the Graphite Dashboard through the Workflow toolbar button or by selecting Open Graphite Dashboard from the Workflow main menu. When accessed, the Graphite Dashboard will open in your web browser, showing the status of all your stacked branches and pull requests.

Disabling Graphite Workflow

If you need to temporarily disable the Graphite workflow for a specific repository, Tower provides an easy way to do this:

1. Click on the Workflow toolbar item or navigate to the main menu
2. Select Disable Graphite Workflow

This action only affects Tower's integration with Graphite and does not modify your Graphite CLI configuration. You can re-enable the Graphite workflow at any time by following the same steps and selecting Enable Graphite Workflow.