# Git Flow for DVC 🌿

**URL:** <https://discuss.dvc.org/t/git-flow-for-dvc/578>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [December 9, 2020, 9:36am UTC](https://discuss.dvc.org/t/git-flow-for-dvc/578 "2020-12-09T09:36:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rabefabi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/74df32/32.png) [@rabefabi](https://discuss.dvc.org/u/rabefabi)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 9:44pm UTC](https://discuss.dvc.org/t/git-flow-for-dvc/578/4 "2020-12-10T21:44:51Z")

</div>

Thanks for taking the time to give feedback!

#### Problem 2

> What do you mean by `just in the run cache` ? Are you using only `-O` options for `dvc run` ?

No, we’re using the `-o` option, but maybe I’ve misunderstood how DVC works here.

My understanding is:  
The CI Runner successfully executed the DVC pipeline, and now has the new outputs (trained model, processed data, …) as well as a new `dvc.lock` in its working directory.  
To make these outputs accessible from the developers local machine, I see two options:

a) The CI Runner does `ci-runner: dvc push --run-cache`, afterwards the I do `dev-local: dvc pull --run-cache && dvc repro`.

- Disadvantages:
  - AFAIK I can’t pull the run cache for just one stage (I need to pull all the preprocessed data as well as the trained model, even if I only want `dvc pull --run-cache model_training`)
  - Looking at a git branch, it’s not immediately obvious whether a successful `dvc repro` has been executed here (compared to a commit with a changed `dvc.lock`)
  - I couldn’t find anything in the [garbage collection docs](https://dvc.org/doc/command-reference/gc) regarding how to clean the run cache, or which runs stay cached after cleaning

- Advantages:
  - No extra commit necessary, to check out the results of an experiment, I can pull the commit with which an experiment was started

b) `ci-runner: git add dvc.lock && git commit && git push && dvc push`

- Disadvantages:
  - CI-Runner needs to be configured to be able to commit to a branch
  - The “results” (the dvc.lock) is stored in a separate commit from the one which started the experiments (relevant for e.g., MLFLow which stores the commit hash of an experiment)

- Advantages
  - The changed `dvc.lock` in a branch tells me that this experiment has been successfully executed
  - I can pull single dvc stages ( `dvc pull model_training`) without downloading all preprocessed data

For all these reasons we opted for option b)

#### Problem 3

Your new solution (`dvc exp run {stage_name} --params epochs=3`) seems ideal, thanks for the hint! Together with the [parameterlike dependencies](https://discuss.dvc.org/t/dvc-yaml-deps-outs-section-accessible-from-code/577/2) we can streamline our project a lot

---

_[View the full topic](https://discuss.dvc.org/t/git-flow-for-dvc/578)._