b4 0.14.0 available

[Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>]

Hello, all:

I am happy to announce b4 version 0.14.0. There are several new features in
this release, alongside many smaller fixes and feature improvements.

# Integrated checks

Both maintainer and contributor side of things are now capable of running some
basic checks, though it's probably the contributors who will find this more
useful.

## b4 prep --check

When working on a new series to submit upstream, contributors can now run:

    $ b4 prep --check
    Checking patches using:
      ./scripts/checkpatch.pl -q --terse --no-summary --strict --showfile --mailback
    ---
    ● c44e5720fc50: serial: exar: adding missing CTI and Exar PCI ids
    ● 7d0281ff188d: serial: exar: add support for reading from Exar EEPROM
      ● checkpatch.pl: drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_exar.c:140: CHECK: Please don't use multiple blank lines
      ● checkpatch.pl: drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_exar.c:209: CHECK: Alignment should match open parenthesis
    [...]
    ---
    Success: 3, Warning: 39, Error: 0

Full documentation for this option is available here:
https://b4.docs.kernel.org/en/stable-0.14.y/contributor/prep.html#checking-your-work
and
https://b4.docs.kernel.org/en/stable-0.14.y/config.html#contributor-oriented-settings

## b4 am/shazam --check

Similarly, you can now run checkpatch on the series you download, though the
default setting may not be as useful to some subsystems:

    $ b4 am --check -o/tmp 20240614171428.968174-1-kris.van.hees@oracle.com
    [...]
    ---
      ✓ [PATCH v4 1/3] kbuild: add mod(name,file)_flags to assembler flags for module objects
        ● checkpatch.pl: passed all checks
      ✓ [PATCH v4 2/3] kbuild, kconfig: generate offset range data for builtin modules
        ● checkpatch.pl: 274: WARNING: added, moved or deleted file(s), does MAINTAINERS need updating?
      ✓ [PATCH v4 3/3] module: add install target for modules.builtin.ranges
        ● checkpatch.pl: passed all checks
      ---
      ✓ Signed: DKIM/oracle.com
    ---
    Total patches: 3

If patchwork integration is configured, ``--check`` will also attempt to
retrieve any CI status from the server.

Full documentation is available here:
https://b4.docs.kernel.org/en/stable-0.14.y/maintainer/am-shazam.html#common-flags
and
https://b4.docs.kernel.org/en/stable-0.14.y/config.html#am-and-shazam-settings

## b4 send pre-flight checks

Another contributor-oriented change is the "pre-flight checks" that will
validate that certain steps have been properly performed (such as running
auto-to-cc after modifying patches). They can be tweaked or turned off
entirely in the config file:
https://b4.docs.kernel.org/en/stable-0.14.y/config.html#contributor-oriented-settings

# Series dependencies

Another large feature is the introduction of series dependencies. If you are
working on a patch series to submit upstream, but know that it is dependent on
another series that has not yet been merged, you can specify it as a
dependency using one of the following keys:

- series change-id
- the message-id of a previously submitted series
- the patch-id of a specific patch in a submitted series

During send, these dependencies will be resolved into prerequisite-patch-id
basement trailers that is expected by tooling. Contributors can use the
``--check-deps`` command to verify that all dependencies can be properly
resolved or to see if there are newer series versions available.

Full documentation for this feature is available here:
https://b4.docs.kernel.org/en/stable-0.14.y/contributor/prep.html#working-with-series-dependencies

# Other features in this release

- b4 prep --add-prefixes : lets you add prefixes to those already defined
- b4 trailers --since-commit [commitish]: lets you find any new trailer
  updates to commits you have already applied to your tree
- automatically recognize standalone patches : if a patch is posted in the
  middle of a larger discussion, b4 will try to automatically recognize that
  situation and ignore the rest of the thread (automatically applies
  --no-parent)
- other small tweaks and updates : for details, see
  https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/b4/b4.git/tree/plan.otl?h=stable-0.14.y

# Updating

If you installed via pip, you can upgrade using:

    pip install --upgrade b4

If you're using b4 via the git checkout, you can either update to latest
master, or checkout the new stable-0.14.y branch. You can also download signed
tarballs from the usual location:

    https://kernel.org/pub/software/devel/b4/

# Special thanks

As usual, thank you to the following people who all helped with the release
(in the reverse-changelog order):

- Lee Jones
- Quentin Schulz
- Chen-Yu Tsai
- user dumitruceclan on Github
- Mark Brown
- Linus Torvalds
- Mattijs Korpershoek
- Lucas De Marchi
- Zhao Mengmeng
- Louis Chauvet
- Andrew Cooper
- Akihiko Odaki
- Emil Velikov
- Will Deacon
- Nicolin Chen
- Philippe Blain

Everyone's contribution is greatly appreciated!

Best wishes,
-K