Hopefully someone can help clear the cobwebs. Up until now, I have used CVS as source control on previous development (not involving the linux kernel) projects. You probably recognize me as the one embarking on an embedded 440GP project (if you haven't filtered me out already :-)). I'm having trouble getting my hands around bitkeeper and understanding how I will source control the kernel going forward.
We will use the linuxppc_2_4_devel kernel and will obviously do porting work for our custom hardware. How do people usually manage their kernel source in these cases? Is it expected/required that the public kernel source eventually contain board level code for our company's custom hardware? Or, do people typically 'clone' a copy of the kernel and then internally manage and maitain a custom kernel tree for their board that remains separate from the bitkeeper dev tree? If it's kept in-house, what is the best way to manage this? A combination of bitkeeper and CVS (bitkeeper to get updates ... CVS to manage the source internally), or bitkeeper all the way? I might want to do some branching as we develop, and I didn't notice any branching capability with bitkeeper. One thing I tried today was to export the kernel tree as of 2.4.20. I soon found out that I had used the wrong tag from the changeset list (v2.4.20 instead of v2.4.20_linuxppc_2_4_devel). If I cloned the linuxppc_2_4_devel tree in the first place, why are "non-ppc_2_4_devel" tags mixed into the changeset list? Another question. How do I determine what the latest version of linuxppc_2_4_devel is out there without looking at the top-level Makefile of the latest pull/clone? Is there a way to reliably extract this from the changset list? Take for example the tags in the changeset list for the lastest ppc_2_4_devel release(s). The most recent is 2.4.21-pre4, yet the label accompanying changeset 1.1244 says "v2.4.20-pre4_linuxppc_2_4_devel" with a "merge to 2.4.21-pre4" in the comments area. I would have expected the label to read "v2.4.21 ..." not "2.4.20...". The second to last labelled changeset for ppc_2_4_devel states "v.2.4.21-pre3_linuxppc_2_4_devel" as I would expect. Is the pre4 case mislabelled or am I missing something here? Any feedback or pointers to howtos on bitkeeper would be appreciated. I've already ready the documentation at the bitmover website and it's more of a command reference than a concepts discussion. Respectfully, -- Brian ** Sent via the linuxppc-embedded mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
