On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Josh Boyer <jwbo...@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> The kernel team has been running an exploded git tree since Flock last
> year.  This has been mostly a "nice to have", but several people have
> commented on how useful it is for them when debugging issues, etc.
> Having the exploded sources with the patches we carry included lets
> them easily see what we have changed and how.
>
> While not a huge burden, this has been mostly an additional effort on
> top of what we already do.  In order to make us a bit more efficient,
> we've been looking at ways to automate or ease this, as well as make
> it possible for more than one person to maintain it.  This has lead to
> some discussion around moving to making the exploded git tree the
> canonical source location for Fedora kernel work.  I'm sending this
> email to start a conversation around that.
>
> So what would this mean?  It means we'd maintain the exploded source
> tree very similar to today, with it rebasing on top of whatever
> upstream we're using as our base.  For info on how that works, see the
> blog post I did about that a while ago.
>
> Using this exploded tree, I've created some scripts to generate the
> pkg-git content.  This is probably the biggest workflow change
> involved.  We still need to use pkg-git to do builds in koji, but
> direct commits to that repo would be disabled outside of a few of us
> needed to do the syncs.  Patches and config changes could be done via
> email to this list, or possibly via pull request to the branch
> maintainer of the exploded tree.
>
> Why would we do this?  A few reasons.  First, it allows us to
> eliminate duplicate maintenance in multiple spots while still
> providing all the same things we are right now.  Second, it moves us
> to more of an upstream kernel development model and hopefully
> increases both visibility and communication in terms of what
> patches/changes go in, etc.  It also makes our job easier during
> rebases, as we can literally use 'git rebase' and work via that
> instead of having to copy around patches to different trees or
> manually adjust patches outside of a normal git workflow.
>
> Who does this impact?  Honestly, not many.  There are exactly 4 people
> that commit to pkg-git today on anything resembling a regular basis.
> However, it is my hope that changing the workflow a bit makes this
> somewhat easier for others to work against a tree and submit patches
> and changes.  I'm not under any impressions that it will exponentially
> increase our contributors, but it will quite possibly make things a
> bit more transparent.
>
> Is this a done decision?  No.  Not at all.  In fact, the scripts
> aren't even finished yet.  I wanted to get the discussion started
> before really investing heavily in finishing them off.  Justin and
> Laura have copies of the (unfinished) scripts and a howto document on
> various tasks.  I'll likely send the howto out once I get a few of the
> last remaining steps working for people to read over.  But the general
> idea isn't going to change much, which is why we're talking about this
> now.
>
> When would this happen?  Unclear.  Certainly not this month as one of
> the primary stakeholders is on PTO.  If the discussion goes well and
> this direction is something we're going to do, then it might be next
> month or at some natural cut-over point.
>
> Will the exploded tree go away if we don't change to this model?  Also
> unclear.  I'd hesitantly say it would stick around, but it might
> change in the way it is created and published.
>
> I'm sure there will be more questions, so please ask away.  Looking
> forward to hearing other's thoughts.

So.  Given that it has been a week and we've heard nothing back, I'm
going to assume that either nobody cares how we maintain our tree
(which tbh is a fair point of view), or all of this sounds great to
everyone.

So here is our plan going forward.  We need a place to try this out to
make sure it is actually a net positive for us.  We intend to drive
the master branch in pkg-git (rawhide) using the tree and scripts for
the 4.2 merge window.  What that means for other people is basically
this:

1) Please do not commit directly to the master branch in pkg-git.  If
you have patches or changes you'd like to see, please send them to
this list.  If you commit something directly to the master branch, it
will get lost on the next sync.  I don't want to close the ACLs right
now since we're still evaluating, so please be careful.

2) The exploded tree will be at https://pagure.io/linux .  The scripts
and howto document are in the fedora directory there.  There is still
work to be done on them, so they'll change over the course of the next
couple of weeks.  Remember, just like the RPM, the tree rebases on top
of upstream linux.git daily.  You'll need to account for this if you
track it.

josh
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