[ipxe-devel] Patch tracking (was: Re: Recent tg3 driver commits still fail on gigabit)

[Robin Smidsrød]

On 05.03.2013 15:42, Michael Brown wrote:
> On 05/03/13 14:24, Robin Smidsrød wrote:
>> What about the two other patches from Cody Cutler that also seem to deal
>> with related tg3 issues? From what I can see, this is only PATCH 3/3.
>> PATCH 1/3 and 2/3 from 2012-08-14 have not been applied.

I also want to confirm that the tg3 patch applied in
https://git.ipxe.org/ipxe.git/commit/e27803e40f9134ca7c05c7bf94f3ccd9bbb8edb4
hasn't made anything worse on my tg3-equipped HP 6730b laptop. Things
are still working there as expected.

> I have lost track of the various versions of tg3 patches that have
> floated around.

I'm starting to think it could be a smart idea to keep a "patch tracker"
around, so that when time comes to review patches and apply them it
should be much easier to find them then to rummage through mailing-list
archives. Technically github pull requests could be used for this, and
there is a feature to import pull requests as branches without using any
of the github APIs. See this gist for details on how to setup your git
environment for this behavior:

https://gist.github.com/piscisaureus/3342247

If you use the ipxe.git mirror on github as the primary source to apply
pull requests to, then it should be trivial to import any pull request
and review/merge it as you want. If you also add the mailing-list
address to the notification adresses for the github mirror of ipxe.git,
you would be notified if anyone tries to either comment or submit a pull
request without having to pay attention to the GitHub pages. I believe
replying to any of those messages should file the comment on the
specific pull requests, which should make it easier to follow up just
using email. It should also make it easier for people not overly
familiar with git to contribute fixes because github has a web-interface
for editing a file in your browser and automatically create a pull request.

That would also make it possible for anyone that follows the
mailing-list to help out by creating a pull request when someone sends a
patch directly to the mailing-list so it's easier to get into its own
branch (which also helps to distribute the load of finding unapplied
patches floating around).

What do you think?

-- Robin