[U-Boot] U-Boot git usage model (was: Re: [PULL] u-boot-usb/next)

[Tom Rini]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 02:32:08PM -0700, Tom Rini wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 03:03:28PM -0600, Stephen Warren wrote:
[snip]
> > The problem with rebasing when pulling is that git commit IDs change,
> > so it's much more difficult to determine when a commit is merged into
> > a parent tree; one has to search by commit subject rather than just
> > executing e.g. git branch -a --contains XXX. I thought Albert just
> > agreed to use merges rather than rebases for u-boot-arm for this and
> > perhaps other reasons.
> 
> The short answer is that right now, u-boot/next follows the linux-next
> model and we rebase as needed.

I'm going to reply to myself, in hopes of clearing things up.  We don't
follow the linux-next model, really, I miss-spoke.

History is important.  But so is getting the amount of process for the
size of the project.  The other thing is that we're doing simultaneous
development for both the current release and the next release.

So for the master branch of the master repo, it must never rebase.  And
as Wolfgang encourages users to use the custodian repository of mainline
isn't quite up to what they need, custodian repositories must also keep
their master branch un-rebased as much as humanly possible (my rule of
thumb would be once it's been in the wild for a few days, it's too
late).

The next branch however can be rebased, as needed.  In the case of
post-v2012.10, it will be rebased as we want the commit to change how
ARM and unaligned accesses are handled to be the first thing.  I don't
think "perfect" "changes A-G were done in repository X against tree Y"
is the most useful bit of information.  When we rebase we may lose that
boards 1/2/3 worked at point Y but we gain change D is when board 2
broke as part of being merged with other changes.

-- 
Tom
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/attachments/20121011/a13657f7/attachment.pgp>