[Buildroot] How to contribute to Buildroot with Git

[Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>]

On Sat, 4 Dec 2010 16:09:00 -0800 (PST)
Justin Mark <oilehus@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I can build libgee with buildroot in my workspace, how should I
> submit the patch for review? post the patch here or directly do it
> from git? Can someone give me some details since I don't know much
> about git?

The best is to use Git. Here is a simplified version of the Git workflow
that I use to work with Buildroot:

 1) Clone (to be done only once)

    git clone git://git.busybox.net/buildroot

 2) Configure Git (to be done only once)

    Then tell git who you are :

    git config --global user.name "Firstname Lastname"
    git config --global user.email firstname.lastname at somewhere.com

    And tell git how to send emails :

    git config --global sendemail.smtpserver mysmtpserver

    And to avoid chained reply :

    git config --global sendemail.chainreplyto false

 3) Create a branch to work on your topic (to be done for every
    separate topic you'd like to work with)

    git checkout -b mytopic

    Note that this also switches immediatly to the new 'mytopic'
    branch. You can run 'git branch' at any time to know on which
    branch you are.

 4) Make some modifications, for one particuler subtopic (like adding
    the vala compiler)

 5) Commit those modifications

    git commit -s -a

    And enter an appropriate commit log.

    If you created new files, add them with "git add".

    Then go back to step 4 for the other changes you want to do, or
    proceed to step 6 if you're done with your changes.

 6) Review your changes

    git log -p master..

 7) Prepare patches for your changes

    git format-patch HEAD

    This will generate a set of 000X-*.patch files in the Buildroot
    directory

 8) Send your patches to the list

    git send-email --to buildroot at uclibc.org --compose *.patch

And you're done.

If while reviewing your commits you find that you need to merge some of
them (because you did some mistakes that you fixed later and you don't
want the world to know about your mistakes), then you have to use the
rebasing feature of git:

    git rebase -i master

Git will open up a text editor with the list of your commits. You can
edit this file to change the order of the commits, or to change the
action taken on a particular commit (see the file itself for
documentation on those actions). A typical thing is :

    pick SOMEGITHASH package: add foobar
    pick SOMEGITHASH package: add barfoo
    pick SOMEGITHASH I did something wrong in add foobar, merge me

So obviously you want the last commit to be merged into the first one,
so that nobody knows you did some mistakes during your development. So,
turn those three lines into the following ones:

    pick SOMEGITHASH package: add foobar
    fixup SOMEGITHASH I did something wrong in add foobar, merge me
    pick SOMEGITHASH package: add barfoo

And exit the text editor. Git will reorganize your commits, and you'll
end up with just two commits.

Don't hesitate to ask questions if you have issues,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com