Re: RFC: Move sparse.git inside linux-kernel-2.6.git?

[Josh Triplett <josh@freedesktop.org>]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 09:20:58PM +0200, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> The linux kernel is one of the major customers of
> sparse and several sparse hackers are very
> active on the kernel front too.
> 
> How about combining forces and move sparse.git inside
> the kernel.
> 
> Benefits doing so:
> 
> - Easy access to sparse from within the kernel.
>   Doing a make C=2 run is now trivial for everyone
> 
> - We (the kernel hackers) has the source readily
>   avalibale when we need to hack it.
> 
> Drawbacks:
> 
> - We need to come up with a solution so it is
>   easy to distribute sparse binaries/source packages
>   without the need to distribute the full kernel source
> 
> 
> The idea has come up before, and now that the kernel
> has a tools/ directory we have a place where sparse can live.
> 
> And I think Linus can find a way to pull sparse.git
> with full history so we do not loose anything doing so.

I think that Sparse needs to exist as a separate project for the benefit
of all the non-kernel users of Sparse, but at the same time I think
having Sparse in the kernel tree would help kernel developers actually
run Sparse as part of their build process.

Fortunately, Git offers a good solution to this problem: submodules.
linux-2.6 could have Sparse as a submodule under the tools/sparse
directory.  Anyone who checked out linux-2.6 via git could then
near-automatically get a copy of Sparse via git, and release tarballs of
Linux could fairly easily include Sparse.

The way submodules work, a commit in the linux-2.6 repository would refer to
a specific commit in the sparse repostory, so linux-2.6 could always point
to a version of Sparse known to more-or-less work with that version of
Linux.

How does that sound?

- Josh Triplett