In the previous step we branched our data from main into a new denmark-lakes branch, and overwrote the lakes.parquet to hold solely information about lakes in Denmark. Now we’re going to commit that change (just like Git) and merge it back to main (just like git).

Committing Changes in lakeFS

Having make the change to the datafile in the denmark-lakes branch, we now want to commit it. There are various options for interacting with the lakeFS API, including the web interface, a Python client, and lakectl which is what we’ll use here. Run the following from a terminal window:

docker exec lakefs \
    lakectl commit lakefs://quickstart/denmark-lakes \
	    -m "Create a dataset of just the lakes in Denmark"

You will get confirmation of the commit including its hash.

Branch: lakefs://quickstart/denmark-lakes
Commit for branch "denmark-lakes" completed.

ID: ba6d71d0965fa5d97f309a17ce08ad006c0dde15f99c5ea0904d3ad3e765bd74
Message: Create a dataset of just the lakes in Denmark
Timestamp: 2023-03-15 08:09:36 +0000 UTC
Parents: 3384cd7cdc4a2cd5eb6249b52f0a709b49081668bb1574ce8f1ef2d956646816

With our change committed, it’s now time to merge it to back to the main branch.

Merging Branches in lakeFS 🔀

As above, we’ll use lakectl to do this too. The syntax just requires us to specify the source and target of the merge. Run this from a terminal window.

docker exec lakefs \
	lakectl merge \
		lakefs://quickstart/denmark-lakes \
		lakefs://quickstart/main

We can confirm that this has worked by returning to the same object view of lakes.parquet as before and clicking on Execute to rerun the same query. You’ll see that the country row counts have changed, and only Denmark is left in the data:

But…oh no! A slow chill creeps down your spine, and the bottom drops out of your stomach. What have you done! 😱 You were supposed to create a separate file of Denmark’s lakes - not replace the original one

Is all lost? Will our hero overcome the obstacles? No, and yes respectively!

Have no fear; lakeFS can revert changes. Tune in for the final part of the quickstart to see how.