Re: Fork freedesktop project to bitbucket, make changes, generate patch back to freedesktop?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 2, 2011, 23:37 UTC
Message-ID: <20111102233714.GB17466@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAO+9iGeHSsJz+7=N0BzmGGbkGN1P=CyNvxJWO_1nCNjiZZzetA@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 02:35:42PM +1100, Alec Taylor wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> I am working with a team extending the functionality of this project.
> 
> After many MANY adds, commits and pushes back and forth on the
> bitbucket project, we then want to send this freedesktop project a
> PATCH with the changes we've made.
> 
> Can you tell me the command I need to do this?

Do you want to send them one patch, or a series of patches?

If one, then you probably want to diff off of some known point (either their current branch tip, or maybe some recently released version). And then send them the resulting diff in an email. You can just use "git diff" for this if you want, and include it in an email, or you can actually create a new "squashed" commit in git, like this:

  git checkout v1.0 ;# or wherever you think they would want to apply
  git merge --squash your-branch
  git commit

and then use "git format-patch" to create a patch (and optionally git-send-email to send it).

If you want to share the whole series, you can use format-patch to create the series, but note that a patch series can only represent a linear history. If you have a lot of merges from pushing back and forth, you may want to linearize it first using "git rebase -i".

That's just a high level overview of what you'll need. You can try reading up on those commands to get a better sense of exactly how you want to proceed, or if you have more specific questions, ask.

-Peff