Wolfgang Denk wrote:
In message 20070817093906.05cca34d.kim.phillips@freescale.com you wrote:
Wolfgang, please do a (and you can cut-n-paste this):
git-pull git://www.denx.de/git/u-boot-mpc83xx.git mpc83xx
Done.
[note the mpc83xx branch]
May I please ask that you use branches for other stuff, and allow me to merge from the "trunk"? Thanks.
Hi Wolfgang and The List,
In the u-boot-fdt repo, I've been using the "fdt" branch for "ready to merge" patches and have advocated standardizing on a "merge" branch for "ready to merge" patches in the TWiki (as well as a "testing" branch for "merge candidate" patches). http://www.denx.de/wiki/view/UBoot/CustodianGitTrees#Tips_for_maintaining_custodian_t
Based on your request above, it would appear that we have not convinced you that pulling from a branch is a Good Thing[tm]. If that is the case, the alternate technique I would advocate would be...
* Maintain the "ready to merge" patches in the master branch (per your request).
* Track the main u-boot repository via a branch "u-boot" (picking a name arbitrarily)
This would still allow the rebasing by doing a periodic pull of the master repo into the "u-boot" branch and then rebasing the "master" on the "u-boot" branch. I have not tried this, but I don't see any reason why it would not work.
The "u-boot" branch would not need to be pushed back to the denx.de repository, so it would cut down the number of published branches by one (generally a 100% reduction ;-). I would still advocate using work-in-progress (e.g. "testing") branch(es) that are pushed back to denx.de as the need arises. I have not felt a need myself, but I can see a place for it for patches that introduce major changes that may take time to mature.
Trivia: ------- One of the reasons I've advocated using a branch to pull from is because linux does it this way, although their methodology and organization of their repositories is somewhat different. They generally create a special branch for Linus to pull from (a quick search on gmane.org shows "for-linus", "release", "merge", "upstream-linus", "upstream",... so there isn't much consistency there to model our methodology after).
An argument for using the "master" branch is that outstanding patches are easier to find and view via gitweb. Figuring out where to click to view a branch is not obvious, it requires scrolling down to the bottom of the page. We've had that issue on the email list and I have to sympathize because it threw me for a minute myself the first time I tried to see changes that were in a branch.
What is the wisdom of the crowd[1]?
Best regards, gvb