[U-Boot] [PATCH v4] Add 'patman' patch generation, checking and submission script

Albert ARIBAUD
2012-02-03T20:00:35Z

Hi Simon,

Le 03/02/2012 20:30, Simon Glass a ?crit :
> Hi Albert,
>
> On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Albert ARIBAUD
> <albert.u.boot@aribaud.net> wrote:
>> Hi Simon,
>>
>> Le 15/01/2012 02:20, Simon Glass a ?crit :
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Hmmm patman found a tag in this commit and tried to send it to Fred
>>> Bloggs. I have added the line below - sorry for the confusion.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 5:12 PM, Simon Glass<sjg@chromium.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> What is this?
>>>> =============
>>>>
>>>> This tool is a Python script which:
>>>> - Creates patch directly from your branch
>>>> - Cleans them up by removing unwanted tags
>>>> - Inserts a cover letter with change lists
>>>> - Runs the patches through checkpatch.pl and its own checks
>>>> - Optionally emails them out to selected people
>>
>> It seems to me that this is not specific to u-boot, and as such, has no
>> reason to be managed along with U-Boot.
>>
>> Why should it not simply have its own project and resources?
>
> It was created in response to Wolfgang's comments that the sometimes
> low quality of patches on the U-Boot ML chews up a lot of time.
>
> It is not technically specific to U-Boot (since it could also be used
> with the Linux kernel), but that was my intent when creating it. If
> this goes in then I plan to look at how to automate build testing also
> so we can more easily see that patches are MAKEALL-clean.
>
> The discussion at the time was here:
>
> http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2011-October/105862.html
>
> and the many messages which followed. My patch was in response to this.

This aptly explains why the tool was created and what it intends to
attain, and that its use in U-Boot was discussed -- things that I did
not question in the first place, and still do not.

What I question is the relevance of tying together the development,
source code management, release management etc of U-Boot and patman. Is
there any reason that a release of U-Boot should also be a release of
patman, or the other way around? Is there any reason even to have
similar development models for both projects?

As an example, the creation of git was strongly motivated by, and tied
to, source code management requirements of Linux, but git is not
integrated in the Linux source tree and its development is fully
independent from that of Linux.

My point is that patman, not being tied to a given project and being
certainly just as useful to may other git-based projects, it should have
its own project, be able to evolve at its own pace, etc.

> Regards,
> Simon

Amicalement,
--
Albert.