Re: kvm repository unification

Arnd Bergmann
2007-03-20T14:37:35Z

On Tuesday 20 March 2007, Avi Kivity wrote:
> How does that work with multiple developers?

You need a set of well-understood rules if more than one person
has commit access to the repository.

The most simple rule would be that everyone just adds patches at
the end of the quilt series. When you submit something upstream,
you can then still decide to fold multiple patches.

As an extension, it is possible to allow changing a previous patch
by replacing it with a forked one. E.g. kvm-add-foo.patch can
get replaced by kvm-add-foo-2.patch, when that contains an improved
version.

It is important though that you never change what a given patch does
without changing the name of the patch, otherwise you get into serious
trouble when merging changes done by someone else into the patch you
are working on.

> I find that git's cherry-pick and history editing features to be almost
> as easy to use as quilt when it comes to managing patches; added to the
> ease of distributed development I think it has a clear edge over quilt.
>
> [I used to use quilt to cherry pick out of the subversion tree.
> Nowadays I just cherry pick what I want to send upstream and put it on a
> branch]

I've never tried the cherry pick approach, since my team for historic
reasons still uses CVS, which doesn't have changesets. If it works well
for you, I guess you shouldn't change.