managing out-of-tree deps for arm-soc in a single window was: Re: [GIT PULL] clockevents/clocksource: Add Marvell Orion SoC timer

[Jason Cooper <jason@lakedaemon.net>]

On Mon, Jul 08, 2013 at 10:45:47AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Jul 2013, Jason Cooper wrote:
> > On Sun, Jul 07, 2013 at 05:30:31PM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > I don't mind delaying half of a series so the drivers/ portion can land
> > in mainline, and the rest can land in the next cycle.  But when things
> > don't go according to that plan, I'd like a little consideration /
> > flexibility about solving the problem.  Especially considering I'm
> > *trying* to do the right thing by pushing to appropriate maintainers
> > first.
> > 
> > Of course, this is a moot point since, as you clarified above, this
> > dependency doesn't have the hazards typically associated with
> > out-of-tree dependencies.
> 
> There is a very simple procedure for stuff like this.
> 
> Series has parts which go through tree A and B and another larger part
> for tree C which depends on the A and B parts.
> 
> So ask the maintainers of A and B to apply this to separate branches,
> which are based on some commit in Linus tree. These branches can be
> pulled into C and C can apply the depending stuff on top.
> 
> Now the maintainers of A and B merge these branches into their main
> devel branch, can do further fixups and stuff on top. And the whole
> thing just works without glitches during the merge window.
> 
> We do this all the time.

Wow, I wish I had known this (or thought of it) months ago!  Thanks for
taking the time to explain it to me.

Arnd, Olof,

Does this address your concerns about out of tree dependencies?  I think
it does, but I'm not the one who has to manage it after I set it up and
send the PR...

thx,

Jason.