Managing linux-next tree for submitting patches

[gmate.amit@gmail.com (Kumar amit mehta)]

Hi,

After some discussions that happened over kernel newbie mailing list in past,
I've managed to send some trivial patches to linux janitors and to relevant
maintainers. My patch base has been linux-next tree and I'm glad that some of
them got merged. Recently, for one of my patch, I got a reply from the
subsystem maintainer that my patch doesn't apply to his tree anymore and asked
me to do a refresh and try again. To make things clear, please find the steps
that I've followed to clone linux-next tree:
amit at ubuntu:~$ mkdir lkernel

amit at ubuntu:~$ cd lkernel

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/amit/lkernel/.git/

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git remote add linux-next
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git fetch linux-next

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git fetch --tags linux-next

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git tag -l next-*
next-20120816
next-20120817
next-20120820
next-20120821
............
............
next-20121114
next-20121115 < -- --- (Most recent tag)

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git checkout next-20121115 -b Nov-15

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git branch
* Nov-15

So *Nov-15* is my local branch and here I did some changes and did a commit
amit@ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git add <some file in staging directory>
amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git commt -a

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git status
# On branch Nov-15
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

I forgot to send this patch for couple of days and maybe that was reason, my 
patch couldn't apply(as mentioned by the subsystem maintainer). So still 
being on my *Nov-15" branch, today(November 21, 2012), I invoked, following 
commands to get the latest tags:

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git branch
* Nov-15

amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git remote update 
amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git fetch linux-next
amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git fetch --tags linux-next

I was hoping to get new tags, but to my surprise there hasn't been any new
releases. This makes me think that something is wrong with my git setup.

My git configuration:
amit at ubuntu:~/lkernel$ git config --list
user.name=<my name>
user.email=<my Email ID>
credential.helper=cache --timeout=3600
sendemail.smtpserver=<gmail smtp server>
sendemail.smtpserverport=<port>
sendemail.smtpencryption=<encryption>
sendemail.smtpuser=<my email ID>
color.ui=true
color.status=auto
color.branch=auto
push.default=matching
branch.autosetuprebase=always
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
core.bare=false
core.logallrefupdates=true
remote.linux-next.url=git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git
remote.linux-next.fetch=+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/linux-next/*
branch.master.remote=linux-next
branch.master.merge=refs/heads/master
branch.master.rebase=true

Please confirm if everything is okay with my git setup and I need not worry if I
do not see any new tags for sometime. 

-Amit