[U-Boot] Merge Process
Hi all, We have, here at Ubicom http://www.ubicom.com, an ongoing process to port u-boot to our architecture. Last week we decided to merge the upstream u-boot codes to our local branch on which had forked from the upstream branch about 8 months ago.We successfully managed to merge remote master branch to our local branch. Is that the correct way of doing this? I mean, should we synchronize with master branch? Is there any convention for the merge process?
Regards, Cem
Dear Cem,
in message 90679b950906180633pf351261u7e581fc723806759@mail.gmail.com you wrote:
We have, here at Ubicom http://www.ubicom.com, an ongoing process to port u-boot to our architecture. Last week we decided to merge the upstream u-boot codes to our local branch on which had forked from the upstream branch about 8 months ago.We successfully managed to merge remote master branch to our local branch. Is that the correct way of doing this? I mean,
It depends on what you are trying to do. If all you want to have is a out-of-tree repository with your stuff in, this may work for you.
If you plan to ever send your patches back upstream, then this is not what you want to do. In such a case you instead want to rebase your local branch against the remote master branch, so you can generate patches against the master branch that can be submitted on the mailing list.
should we synchronize with master branch? Is there any convention for the merge process?
There are no conventions for private repositories - you do what suits your purposes best. It's only the communication with the community (i. e. how to submit patches upstream) which is well defined and do- cumented.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
Dear Wolfgang, Our ultimate purpose is to have our architecture become one of the publicly supported architectures by U-Boot. What I really want to know is that should we always follow the master branch of original repo? I see several different branches as well. At the end, the patches we'll send to the mailing list will probably have a big size. Should we just send the whole patch or?
Regards, Cem
2009/6/18 Wolfgang Denk wd@denx.de
Dear Cem,
in message 90679b950906180633pf351261u7e581fc723806759@mail.gmail.com you wrote:
We have, here at Ubicom http://www.ubicom.com, an ongoing process to
port
u-boot to our architecture. Last week we decided to merge the upstream u-boot codes to our local branch on which had forked from the upstream branch about 8 months ago.We successfully managed to merge remote master branch to our local branch. Is that the correct way of doing this? I
mean,
It depends on what you are trying to do. If all you want to have is a out-of-tree repository with your stuff in, this may work for you.
If you plan to ever send your patches back upstream, then this is not what you want to do. In such a case you instead want to rebase your local branch against the remote master branch, so you can generate patches against the master branch that can be submitted on the mailing list.
should we synchronize with master branch? Is there any convention for the merge process?
There are no conventions for private repositories - you do what suits your purposes best. It's only the communication with the community (i. e. how to submit patches upstream) which is well defined and do- cumented.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
-- DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de But the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. - _Profiles of the Future_ (1962; rev. 1973) ``Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination''
Dear Cem Eliguzel,
In message 90679b950906180951r53175b65r7a9e26ae5993bf27@mail.gmail.com you wrote:
Our ultimate purpose is to have our architecture become one of the publicly supported architectures by U-Boot.
Then you should start (as soon as possible!) to following the community development model. It is always a very bad idea to keep your code closed for a long time ("we will submit only when everything is ready"), because (1) this means a lot of work for you to rebase your code again and again against the mainline repo, and (2) there are pretty high chances that parts of your code will be rejected for one reason or another and you will find that you build lots of other parts on tiop of this, so you have to change or rework *everything*. Release early, release often is still true.
What I really want to know is that should we always follow the master branch of original repo? I see several different branches as well.
You can have as many branches as you like, but yes, it is always a good idea to rebase your branches frequently against master so you can see when things start falling apart.
At the end, the patches we'll send to the mailing list will probably have a big size. Should we just send the whole patch or?
Never try that. Please read the patch submissions guidelines, start at http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot/Patches
You will have to submit your code as a series of small, independent, orthogonal to each other patches. From what you write I suspect that you failed to keep your changes separated in such small units - but submitting just one huge blob will not work: we will not accept it, even if it should fit within the size limits of the mailing list (100 kB per message). I read between your lines that you will have to rework your patches, splitting them up into logical units.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
participants (2)
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Cem Eliguzel -
Wolfgang Denk