[U-Boot] ARM Workflow: rebase on ARM repositories

[Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>]

Dear Stefano,

In message <5044A44F.2050204@denx.de> you wrote:
> 
> One of them uses u-boot-imx for his development, and of course after I
> rebased my tree he got into trouble, due to using a commit that does not
> exist anymore.

Thanks for bringing up this topic.

> Albert has described the way we are currently using in
> http://www.denx.de/wiki/view/U-Boot/CustodianGitTrees. I think you konow
> very well and it is the way we follow, and we usually rebase our tree
> after u-boot-arm is merged by Wolgang in mainline. I want to discuss
> here if we really need it and if this is the correct way to do.

I think it is wrong to rebase any tree for which it is not very
clearly and lodly announced that this tree gets rebased on a more or
less regular base. linux-next is such an example - we allknow it gets
rebased frequently, so we can arrange with it (though I have to admit
that I dn't like it, and that I've been bitten myself more than once
by this).

For u-boot-*, most users I know are not aware of any rebasing policy.

> My big question is if we should not to come back using "git pull" to
> downstream mainline from Wolfgang's tree, instead of continuos rebase. I
> know that we switched to rebase to avoid a lot of "git merge commits",
> but maybe this is not so bad as rebasing.

I would prefer to have at least rebase-free "master" branches in all
custodian repositories.  It is perfectly OK to have working branches,
and to rebase these as work progresses.  But for the master branches,
a rebase should be more or less tabu.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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