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

[Arthur Jones]

hi michael, ...

On Tue, Jun 12, 2007 at 11:41:08AM +0300, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> For whom it may concern,
> I have created an ofed git tree updated with kernel bits from 2.6.22-rc4,
> and put that up at git://git.openfabrics.org/~mst/ofed_kernel.git
> [...] 
> In particular, there were a ton of ipath patches that it seems were
> for the most part applied.
> Qlogic maintainers, please help double check that I did not miss something
> of value.

thanks for setting this up, i'm still looking
at the diffs to make sure things got setup
correctly for the ipath stuff...

i have found it difficult to navigate the
source having to run:

./ofed_scripts/configure --kernel-version=2.6.xxx --without-quilt

everytime to check against our tree.  so, rather
than spending the better part of the afternoon
running these scripts by hand, i created a shell
script to populate a bunch of branches with the
backports in each branch.

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.

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...

arthur