[U-Boot-Users] Revised custodian git writeup

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Jerry,

in message <4795F081.5050204 at ge.com> you wrote:
>
> The conflicting requirements are:
> 1) Wolfgang wishes to pull from the subrepo "master" branch

...and others will do that, too, at unknown points of time.

> 2) Subrepository custodians must rebase to pull the latest changes and 
> fix any merge conflicts so that Wolfgang's pulls don't have merge conflicts.

...must rebase their working branch(es), but there is no need that
I'll be pulling from exactly this/these branches.

As explained before, my idea is that the custodians will merge  their
code  into the master branch (a) for others to test it and (b) for me
to pull from. 

> I don't believe the rebasing will cause problems because the rebasing is 
> pulling from the u-boot.git master repository (or possibly 
> u-boot-testing.git) which is rebuilding the subrepo "uboot" branch to 
> match the u-boot.git master, and then rebasing the subrepo "master" 
> based on the u-boot.git master.  This will make the subrepo "master" 
> *match* the u-boot.git master *plus* append the new patches to be pulled.

The idea of rebasing the master branch is something that find
frightening.

> I think the difference with our use vs. the general case that the 
> warning applies to is that the custodians are making their "master" 
> branch conform exactly to the u-boot.git master branch and then adding 
> on the patches to be pulled.

I'm ot sure if I want to have such a requirement.

> Disclaimer: The following is my reasoning, *not* experience, and could 
> be full of "stuff."
> 
> In the general (problematic) case, I think the problem is that someone 
> snapshots a branch (clones / pulls), that branch gets rewritten in a way 
> that doesn't match the snapshot, and then a follow-on pull will fail. 

This is why I think that master should never be rebased. "master" is
(IMO) supposed to always provide a consistent history.

> The two differences, as I see it, are:
> 1) Wolfgang's u-boot.git is The Master, the custodian repos conform to 
> that.  (If things get messed up, with a -f force, but that shouldn't 
> happen I don't think.)
> 2) We are interested in feeding patches to u-boot.git, not with 
> preserving the history of our custodian repos.

Wrong. I *am* interested in preserving the history of  the  custodian
repos.  Somebody mostly interested in ARM processors shall be able to
use the ARM custodian's repo for all his daily work exactly the  same
way as he could use the main repo.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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