-Tony
-Last updated w.r.t. GIT 0.99.5
+Last updated w.r.t. GIT 1.1
Linux subsystem maintenance using GIT
-------------------------------------
patches blocked in the test tree waiting for complex changes to accumulate
enough test time to graduate.
-Back in the BitKeeper days I achieved this my creating small forests of
+Back in the BitKeeper days I achieved this by creating small forests of
temporary trees, one tree for each logical grouping of patches, and then
pulling changes from these trees first to the test tree, and then to the
release tree. At first I replicated this in GIT, but then I realised
First create your work tree by cloning Linus's public tree:
- $ git clone rsync://rsync.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git work
+ $ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git work
Change directory into the cloned tree you just created
branch into a local branch named "linus":
$ cat > .git/remotes/linus
- URL: rsync://rsync.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
+ URL: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
Pull: master:linus
^D
These can be easily kept up to date by merging from the "linus" branch:
- $ git checkout test && git resolve test linus "Auto-update from upstream"
- $ git checkout release && git resolve release linus "Auto-update from upstream"
+ $ git checkout test && git merge "Auto-update from upstream" test linus
+ $ git checkout release && git merge "Auto-update from upstream" release linus
+
+Important note! If you have any local changes in these branches, then
+this merge will create a commit object in the history (with no local
+changes git will simply do a "Fast forward" merge). Many people dislike
+the "noise" that this creates in the Linux history, so you should avoid
+doing this capriciously in the "release" branch, as these noisy commits
+will become part of the permanent history when you ask Linus to pull
+from the release branch.
Set up so that you can push upstream to your public tree (you need to
log-in to the remote system and create an empty tree there before the
When you are happy with the state of this change, you can pull it into the
"test" branch in preparation to make it public:
- $ git checkout test && git resolve test speed-up-spinlocks "Pull speed-up-spinlock changes"
+ $ git checkout test && git merge "Pull speed-up-spinlock changes" test speed-up-spinlocks
It is unlikely that you would have any conflicts here ... but you might if you
spent a while on this step and had also pulled new versions from upstream.
see the value of keeping each patch (or patch series) in its own branch. It
means that the patches can be moved into the "release" tree in any order.
- $ git checkout release && git resolve release speed-up-spinlocks "Pull speed-up-spinlock changes"
+ $ git checkout release && git merge "Pull speed-up-spinlock changes" release speed-up-spinlocks
After a while, you will have a number of branches, and despite the
well chosen names you picked for each of them, you may forget what
is empty. At this point the branch can be deleted:
- $ rm .git/refs/heads/branchname
+ $ git branch -d branchname
Some changes are so trivial that it is not necessary to create a separate
branch and then merge into each of the test and release branches. For
case "$1" in
test|release)
- git checkout $1 && git resolve $1 linus "Auto-update from upstream"
+ git checkout $1 && git merge "Auto-update from upstream" $1 linus
;;
linus)
before=$(cat .git/refs/heads/linus)
echo $1 already merged into $2 1>&2
exit 1
fi
- git checkout $2 && git resolve $2 $1 "Pull $1 into $2 branch"
+ git checkout $2 && git merge "Pull $1 into $2 branch" $2 $1
;;
*)
usage