recommendation for patch maintenance

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi.

I would like to have advices about some possible workflows to use when maintaining a patch, that can evolve over the time (fixing bugs, and applying advices from reviewers).

In my case I have a single commit to maintain.

The workflow I use now is this:

  1) create a topic branch, e.g. mp/complete-path
  2) write code
  3) commit
  4) format-patch --output=mp/complete-patch master
  5) review the patch
  6) send-email

when I need to update the patch:

  1) modify code
  2) commit --amend
  3) format-patch --subject-prefix="PATCH v<n>" \
     --output=mp/complete-patch master
  4) edit patch to add a list of what was changed
  5) review the patch
  6) send-email

This is far from ideal, since all my local changes are lost. Another problem is that when I found some trivial error in 5), I need to call format-patch again, loosing the "what's changed list".

A possible solution is to:

1) create a "public" topic branch, e.g. mp/complete-patch
2) create the associated "private" topic branch, e.g.
   mp/complete-patch/private
...

Changes are committed to the private branch. When I need to update the patch:

  1) update code
  2) commit new changes; the commit message will contain the
     "what's changed" list to be used for the new version of the patch
  3) checkout <public branch>
  4) merge --squash <private branch>

Now I have my full history, and the "what's changed list" is saved in the private commits.

(not tested)

What is the workflow you usually use?

Thanks   Manlio
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAlDUde4ACgkQscQJ24LbaUSqOwCfZON5f9mdAYkvACim802JGFhP 5W8An1Y7WXgsH/Q/p1/0jVMo1dJ3HwwO =Xydn -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----