Re: nicer frontend to get rebased tree?

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> So what you can do is to "git fetch" it (to download it), and then "git 
> checkout" to create a temporary checkout. That's pretty much all you can 
> do with linux-next.

.. oh, and you can also do a throw-away branch and test what a merge would 
look like when merged into linux-next. 

Basically there's a few sane sequences you can do with linux-next:

 - They all basically start with "fetch and test":

	# This obviously assumes you have set up 'linux-next' as a branch
	# earlier by either editing .git/config or using 'git remote add'
	# or something

	git fetch linux-next

	git checkout linux-next/master
	.. this will create a _temporary_ branch ("detatched head") ..
	.. you can now compile, install, boot this state ..

   repeat as necessary, but never actually do anything else with that 
   detached branch (do a "git checkout master" to get back to a sane 
   state)

and after that you can do some things:

 - You can do throw-away work on that temporary branch: you can fix up 
   crap when it doesn't compile etc, but you should always remember that 
   it's purely throw-away, beacuse all of linux-next is throw-away, and 
   gets re-created from scratch each time.

   In particular, one useful "throw-away" thing to do is to test what 
   would happen if all the crud on linux-next is merged with whatever you 
   have done youself. So assuming you're still on that throw-away branch 
   (aka "detached head": "git branch" will say "* (no branch)" is your 
   current branch), you can do things like

	git merge master

   to merge in your own work on top of linux-next, but as a total 
   throw-away (which is what you want: you can never use the state for 
   anything else anyway, and you do _not_ want to pollute your real work 
   in "master" by merging in the throw-away linux-next into that!)

but what you should _never_ do is to forget that you're on the throw-away 
branch, and do any real development.

			Linus