[ewg] Re: [ofa-general] ANNOUNCE ofed backports for 2.6.22 kernel bits

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

> Quoting Sean Hefty <sean.hefty at intel.com>:
> Subject: RE: [ofa-general] ANNOUNCE ofed backports for 2.6.22 kernel bits
> 
> >at qlogic we now keep the backports as branches in
> >our git tree and this, i find, is much easier to
> >handle.  because:
> >
> >* viewing and navigating backport source becomes
> >  _much_ easier.
> >* merges are easier -- patches are much more fragile
> >  than branches.
> >* comparisons are easier -- checking for differences
> >  between backports and between a backport and the
> >  canonical source is faster and more convenient...
> >* changesets are readable.  trying to decipher diffs
> >  to patches is medically proven to take months, if not
> >  years, off your life.
> 
> Let's add that you don't need patches to patches, and the order patches are
> applied isn't determined alphabetically.
> 
> >anyway, what do you think?  is there anyway i could
> >convince you to dump the backport patches and put
> >all the backports in branches?  i'm willing to do the
> >legwork if you see value...
> 
> I would love OFED to dump the patch directory concept.

I'd love to have a common source for all kernels,
and the kernel_addons mechanism does this for us whenever possible.

But, for these cases where the code actually needs to be modified,
applying a patch seems like the least evil way to do it.
Alternatives seem to be much worse.

-- 
MST