From: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 00:58:48 GMT
Subject: Re: Stacked GIT 0.1 (a.k.a. quilt for git)
Message-ID: <20050623175848.1cf41a52.pj@sgi.com>
In-Reply-To: <tnxy899zzu7.fsf@arm.com>

Interesting idea.  Thanks.

I am just firing it up now - noticing a couple of nits:

 1) "Unknown" is misspelled as "Unkown" in a couple places.

 2) I tried doing an "stg init" in the stgit subtree that I had
    just unpacked and installed (python setup.py install).  This
    did several lines of "Adding ..." and then displayed the
    number "16" and sat there.  I typed some random guesses at
    it, and realized I was inside my $EDITOR=/bin/ed.

    Before invoking an editor, it would be a good idea to tell the
    user you are doing so.  If someone is on a telnet session to
    a system with their $DISPLAY set wrong, they might not even
    get the terse "16" clue that I got, that they are editing
    something.

 3) My editor 'ed' exits with non-zero status if I make even the most
    trivial editing error.  This resulted in this "stg init" failing
    with:
	stg init: Editor (ed .commitmsg) failed
    I'd recommend ignoring the exit status of externally invoked
    editors.

 4) I tried rerunning that "stg init" without further ado, and it
    failed again (due to the incomplete init above, no doubt), with:

	Traceback (most recent call last):
	  File "/usr/bin/stg", line 25, in ?
	    main()
	  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/stgit/main.py", line 557, in main
	    command.func(parser, options, args)
	  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/stgit/main.py", line 91, in init
	    stack.init()
	  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/stgit/stack.py", line 187, in init
	    patch_dir = get_patch_dir()
	  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/stgit/stack.py", line 36, in get_patch_dir
	    return os.path.join(git.base_dir, 'patches', git.get_head_file())
	  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/posixpath.py", line 60, in join
	    if b.startswith('/'):
	AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'startswith'

 5) I tried again, doing:

	rm -fr .git
	stg init
	# on the commit message edit - just quit 'q', to avoid any error exit

    This failed again, leaving my new git tree in god only knows what bogus state.
    It failed with:

	stg init: Commit message not modified

    I'm getting a little frustrated by now.  Guess I will just nuke the .git subtree
    and try again, as I have no clue what useful or bogus state this left me in.

    Try generating fewer fatal errors, and try giving a tiny clue what state (ok or
    not or how bad) one is left in after an apparently fatal error, and for extra
    credit, a clue what to do next.

 6) Ok - got through the init that time.

Since I am fond of both quilt and Python, and since I need to be using git and/or cogito,
I will poke around some more with this - it's promising.

I see something about a patch emailer on the todo list -- you're welcome to make use of
my patch emailer (I use with quilt, though it's not tightly bound to quilt) at:

  http://www.speakeasy.org/~pj99/sgi/sendpatchset

-- 
                  I won't rest till it's the best ...
                  Programmer, Linux Scalability
                  Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com> 1.925.600.0401