[U-Boot-Users] Revised custodian git writeup

[Haavard Skinnemoen]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:55:33 +0100
Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de> wrote:

> Rebasing the master branch, i. e. the one I'll be pullung from?
> 
> Are you sure that is a good idea? Note that I (and probably others)
> will be pulling from that branch, and not only once!

That depends on whether or not you want your commit history filled with
"merge with upstream/master" crap or not.

You should only pull when explicitly requested to do so. In that case,
if the branch was newly rebased, there will be a clean, linear history
from the tip of your master branch to the tip of the one being pulled.

If there are conflicting changes and the merge needs manual
intervention, you abort the merge and tell the one sending the pull
request that it didn't merge cleanly, please rebase.

>        When you rebase a branch, you are changing its history in a
>        way that will cause problems for anyone who already has a copy
>                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>        of the branch in their repository and tries to pull updates
>        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>        from you. You should understand the implications of using git
>        ^^^^^^^^^
>        rebase on a repository that you share.

And that is, IMO, exactly why you shouldn't be pulling from the master
branch in the first place. People who pull regularly to test stuff that
is in progress will run into this problem, and they are most likely to
pull the master branch because that's the default.

There are two different kinds of users involved here: You (and other
maintainers that are "upstream" from someone), and regular users who
want to test stuff. Upstream maintainers should receive a clean
history, i.e. from a branch that is frequently rebased. At the same
time, we should avoid exposing testers to the problems of dealing with
a branch that is rebased all the time.

So we need (at least) two different branches that are maintained in
different ways, and I think it's easier to tell you, Wolfgang and other
upstream maintainers, to pull from a non-master branch than to tell
everyone else in the world.

Just my two cents.

Haavard