[U-Boot-Users] Please pull u-boot-mpc83xx.git mpc83xx branch

[Jerry Van Baren]

Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> In message <20070817093906.05cca34d.kim.phillips at 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

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds>