Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 16:10:55 -0500
From: "John W. Linville" <linville@tuxdriver.com>
To: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
Cc: davem@davemloft.net
Subject: Revised wireless tree management practices
Message-ID: <20091209211054.GB32058@tuxdriver.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org

Greetings,

So I'm tired of a) being asked how wireless-testing is managed; and,
b) having trouble explaining it.  I think it is time to move to a
more conventional process for wireless patches.

The main change I would like to make for now is to move wireless-2.6
and wireless-next-2.6 to a default "immutable history" policy.
By this I mean that I will strive to keep the history both clean
and immutable in those trees.  If for some reason I can't make that
happen and have to rebase those trees, I will make a loud and obvious
announcement on the linux-wireless mailing list.  More likely, it
means I may have to push an occasional revert through those trees
that I might have otherwise avoided.

One of the ramifications of this will be that I will need to be
extra careful about what gets merged into those trees.  I have been
pushing patches into those trees quickly after merging them into
wireless-testing, relying on linux-next to uncover some of the problems
a quick review might miss.  Now I will need to have higher confidence
in a patch before pushing it to wireless-next-2.6 or (especially)
wireless-2.6, so some patches may take longer to get there.  All of
your usual dilligent reviews are most helpful in this regard.

For now, the main change to wireless-testing will be that I will be
pulling from wireless-2.6 and wireless-next-2.6 rather than reapplying
most patches.  This should limit (and possibly eliminate) the confusing
patch-revert-reapply-repeat practice I have been using there for a
long time.  However, I still anticipate using w-t as a holding area
for questionable patches.  So, at least some patches may still get
the revert-reapply treatment.  I may ask Stephen to pull w-t into
linux-next in order to expand testing of any such patches.

One advantage to this new process is that it will enable me to more
readily accept actual git pull requests from driver/subsystem
maintainers.  In order for this to work, those maintainers will need to
send separate pull requests for fixes intended for the current release
and for features intended for the next release.  They will also need to
maintain their trees appropriately (i.e. separate trees or separate
branches with appropriate bases) for this to work.  If anyone is
interested in doing this, feel free to ask more questions.

Well, there is my overview.  Anyone have questions/objections/etc?

Thanks,

John

P.S.  If you care (and most of you should not), I intend for
wireless-2.6 and wireless-next-2.6 to pull from Linus at v2.6.33-rc1
and then only pull from net-2.6 or net-next-2.6 (or wireless-2.6)
if necessary for dependencies or conflict resolution.  Any
driver/subsystem maintainers that want me to pull from them should
consider doing something similar.
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville@tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.