Linville update wireless-2.6/everything

[David Woodhouse]

On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 11:44 -0500, John W. Linville wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 04:20:55PM +0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > The important difference is that a 'patch' can be committed many times
> > in many different places in many different git trees (or branches).
> > That's many _different_ git-commits. But only one patch.
> 
> This is a technical detail.  Getting the patch merged is the important
> part, the point of the exercise.
> 
> > People who use git will base their work on a given commit. And if that
> > commit suddenly disappears in a rebase or re-commit, and never makes it
> > into Linus' tree, that's a pain.
> 
> Yes, pain that can be minimized downstream by following a simple git
> procedure and following the principle of "merge early and often".

All the above basically throws away the advantages which make git so,
well, advantageous.

You're right; there are ways of dealing with the pain, and when it comes
down to it, it really is just about getting the patches merged.

It just sucks that we have this tool and we're not even _using_ it to
its full effect (for network code).

> > > FWIW I haven't rebased 'everything' yet, although I do plan to rebase
> > > on -rc4 soon.
> > 
> > Right. Which is why I chose _not_ to base my git tree on yours, but on
> > Linus' tree.
> 
> ...where a number of libertas patches are not currently available
> (which was already true before last night's merging)...

That's where we came in. Can we commit libertas patches _only_ to the
libertas tree now, and not send them through the other convoluted
non-git process please?

I thought we'd agreed to that on IRC a few days ago; I must have
misunderstood. 

Let's draw a line under the _commits_ (not patches) you've already sent
upstream, and I'll base my tree on those. Where are they?

> > > I don't really see the conflict.  It just seems to me that the pain
> > > is all mine -- when you are done I pull your tree, figure-out which
> > > commits are new, and reapply them on top of whatever is current.
> > > What is the big deal?
> > 
> > That's true to a certain extent, but I was trying to _avoid_ causing
> > that pain. If you weren't keeping libertas patches in your patch-stack,
> > then there would be no pain. You'd just have a clean tree to pull from.
> 
> The big "rename everthing libertas_ to lbs_" patch was already sent
> toward 2.6.25.  Doesn't that render the whole "clean tree" theory moot?

Yes, it does. That's why I wanted to have it _just_ in the libertas
tree, and not have it recommitted elsewhere as a completely different
commit. But now you've sent it upstream, I'll throw away my tree and
base on your commits instead.

> I'm sorry, I just don't have the luxury of only sending pristine
> commits to Linus.  I have to coordinate with jgarzik and davem, and
> they usually rebase their trees before pushing to Linus in the merge
> window anyway.  So I push them commits representing patches that
> apply at the top of the stack.  That way your patches get merged,
> even though your commits are lost.  It is the best I can do.

I understand. If I were you, I'd avoid using their trees as much as
possible -- I'd work directly on Linus' tree, and also push directly to
Linus. How often do you _actually_ depend on patches which are in
davem's or jgarzik's trees anyway? Or more to the point, how often
_would_ you depend on such patches, if you were trying to avoid it? 

But I don't really mean to tell you how to do the job. I was just saying
that _I_ would like to use git (as git), which I don't think is a
particularly unreasonable desire, and that I would therefore prefer to
have a separate libertas tree based directly on Linus tree. And thus,
please can we try to make sure that libertas patches from now on go that
way rather than through the mangler?

Yes, of course I'll try to make sure that stuff is fed upstream early
and often. That makes sense -- and the failure to do that, along with
merging of OLPC-specific hacks which should never have seen the light of
day, is what led to the original mess with the libertas tree. Don't be
put off by that.

-- 
dwmw2