Re: Git workflow: how to achieve?

From: Sitaram Chamarty <sitaramc@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 28, 2009, 15:59 UTC
Message-ID: <slrngve9vs.is7.sitaramc@sitaramc.homelinux.net>
In-Reply-To: <20090428140248.31237.qmail@science.horizon.com>

On 2009-04-28, George Spelvin <linux@horizon.com> wrote:

> I want, AT ALL TIMES, to be running the kernel consisting of
> Linus's latest plus my various local hacks.  I want to be able to
> freely update any of the components that make up the result,
> and have the sum automatically recomputed for me.

[and]

> (Because I'm currently organized as a linear list of local
> patches on top of upstream.  I'd prefer separate feature
> branches plus merges, but that's what I'm asking how to make
> work efficiently.)

I'll freely admit I'm focusing on just those two paras out of a fairly long email, but topgit does precisely this. I've started to use it, and it seems to do the job well. When a feature branch gets updated, you just check out what I will call "t/all" and do a "tg update" and it picks up the new stuff.

So the everyday stuff works.

The only sort-of-open question, right now, is how do you remove a dependency when one of your "local hacks" grows up and goes off to college. Er... I mean gets accepted upstream :-)

My guess is that as long as all these local hacks are indeed local, the branch that represents the "sum total" can be blown away and rebuilt when that happens; you'd just list all but the recently graduated feature as dependencies.

Regards,

Sitaram