Re: [RFC] new -stable tag variant, Git workflow question

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 20:41 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:50:24PM -0600, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-11-10 at 11:37 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> > > On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 09:29:48AM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2009-11-09 at 20:14 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> > > > > > A further question is, i can see using this tagging scheme in the future 
> > > > > > in merge commits log messages too - will your scripts notice that too?
> > > > > 
> > > > > Hm, I don't think we look at merges as there's nothing there to actually
> > > > > commit.
> > > > > 
> > > > > > For example if there's a few commits left in tip:*/urgent branches 
> > > > > > (tip:sched/urgent, tip:core/urgent, tip:x86/urgent, etc.) by the time 
> > > > > > v2.6.32 is released, i will then merge them into tip:sched/core, 
> > > > > > tip:core/core, tip:x86/core, etc. - and i could use the merge commit as 
> > > > > > a notification area to 'activate' them for -stable backporting via a 
> > > > > > merge commit.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > This is how such merge commits would look like:
> > > > > > 
> > > > > >   Merge branch 'core/urgent' into core/rcu
> > > > > > 
> > > > > >   Merge reason: Pick up urgent fixes that did not make it into .32.0
> > > > > > 
> > > > > >   Cc: <stable@kernel.org> # .32.x: 83f5b01: rcu: Fix long-grace-period race
> > > > > >   Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > This is not so rare of a situation as it might seem - for the trees i 
> > > > > > maintain it happens in almost every release cycle - i typically skip 
> > > > > > urgent branch merges after -rc8/-rc9, unless they are very-very-urgent 
> > > > > > fixes - but they'd still be eligible for -stable.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Ok, that would be good and fine with me.
> > > > > 
> > > > > James, would your script pick this up, or does it need to also pay
> > > > > attention to merge commits?
> > > > 
> > > > No ... because merge commits should effectively be empty (and when
> > > > they're not you can't generate an applyable diff).  If I understand the
> > > > workflow, the desire is to have the whole branch sent to stable by
> > > > tagging the merge commit.  That's possible ... it's exactly the same
> > > > logic I use in the commit scripts for the SCSI tree, so it should be
> > > > possible to extract the logic.
> > > > 
> > > > By the looks of the above it's only a few commits, or is it the entire
> > > > branch?
> > > 
> > > I'm thinking the commit would be the merge, right Ingo?  So it would
> > > just be a single commit that has the marker in it.
> > 
> > OK, so I can make it send you this just by removing the --no-merge flag
> > from the git rev-list the script uses to sift through what changed
> > (which I've already done).
> > 
> > The slight problem is that further down, to generate the patch the
> > script uses git format-patch -k --stdout commit^..commit.  For a merge
> > commit, this will generate a patch equivalent to the entire branch that
> > was merged, even though the commit message will only pick out some of
> > these ... is this OK?
> > 
> > If not, I can look at using git show instead to generate the patches (it
> > will effectively generate null diffs for merge points with the stable
> > tag, which is closer to what you want).
> > 
> > Alternatively, if you pick up the commits from Linus' tree anyway, I
> > could just stop producing diffs, which will save email bandwidth and
> > then be automatically correct whether the commit is a merge or not.
> 
> No, I'd like to keep diffs, and use Linus's suggestion to get the
> correct diff, I have had that same bug in some scripts I have written as
> well.

OK, so git show --pretty=email -u --stat -M --cc <commit>

seems to be what works well (the options are -u to generate diff plus
stats, -M to detect renames and --cc to try to generate a diff for merge
points showing if there have been non trivial fix ups).

I've attached a sample below of what it will look like for a stable
tagged merge point.  As you can see, because this is a simple merge, the
diff is empty.

James

---

From: 	James Bottomley <jejb@kernel.org>
To: 	jejb@kernel.org
Subject: 	Patch Upstream: Merge branch 'master'
of /pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jejb/scsi-rc-fixes-2.6
Date: 	12/11/09 10:07:58 (Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:07:58 GMT)


commit: f2d5c3c1e34a7cc006de8e3cf94fe11f68dad894
From: James Bottomley <jejb@hera.kernel.org>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:51:38 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Merge branch 'master' of /pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jejb/scsi-rc-fixes-2.6

Cc: Stable Tree <stable@kernel.org> # .32.x: 83f5b01: rcu: Fix long-grace-period race
Signed-off-by: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@suse.de>

 drivers/scsi/bfa/bfad_im.c         |    2 +-
 drivers/scsi/ipr.c                 |   42 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
 drivers/scsi/ipr.h                 |    1 +
 drivers/scsi/libsas/sas_expander.c |    1 -
 drivers/scsi/pmcraid.c             |   10 ++++----
 drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_fc.c   |    3 ++
 include/scsi/scsi_host.h           |   29 +++++++++---------------
 7 files changed, 54 insertions(+), 34 deletions(-)