Re: [PATCH updated]: How to be a kernel driver maintainer

Arjan van de Ven
2006-01-09T21:28:24Z

On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 08:34 -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 08:46 +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 16:45 -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> > > Here's an updated document. I integrated the suggestions. For Arjan, I
> > > added a new section at the end. Hopefully that addresses the concerns
> > > for cvs-mentality.
> >
> > it doesn't enough ;(
> >
> > you still do a major suggestion to keep the code in a repo outside the
> > kernel. For a single driver really that's at best "optional" and
> > shouldn't be the prime recommendation.
> >
> > "If your driver is affected, you are expected to pick up these changes
> > and merge them with your primary code (e.g. if you have a CVS repo for
> > maintaining your code)."
> >
> > that sentence is just really the one that I hate. It's bogus. It still
> > calls the private CVS copy "primary".
> > If you do the right thing (and store deltas against mainline and not
> > full code except for scratch stuff) then this is no question of "merging
> > back from mainline" at all.
>
> But it says "your primary code". I'm not sure of another way to put it.

"your temporary development copy"

> Obviously, they have to do their work, and their development on
> something that isn't in Linus tree. If they are doing this work, they
> need to make sure that when they diff for patches, that they merge
> changes before diffing. The only way this is close to automatic is with
> git. Any other method requires manually merging.

not correct. quilt is a very excellent counter example of that.