What to do with branches after submitting patches?

[Yann Droneaud]

Hi,

Le 11.10.2013 00:23, Matthias Beyer a écrit :
> 
> I just got into kernel development and currently doing some patching
> of the usb divers for coding style adaptions and so on.
> 
> My current workflow is:
> 
> - get latest torvalds master
> - merge local master with fast forward to torvalds/master
> - create new branch, say "usb-core-foobar-cleanup"
> - patch the stuff, write commits
> - git format-patch master...usb-core-foobar-cleanup
> - git send-email ...
> 
> So what to do with the branches now? I think I should keep them until
> the patches are merged, okay. And then? delete them? I mean, I'm still
> the author of the patches, and they will be included in history some
> time (as soon as the next release comes out they will be in
> torvalds/master).
> 
> I just submitted my second patch series to the lkml, and now I have to
> remember which patch series was the result of which branch... if I
> submit one or two more patch series, I have to remember the relations
> between patch series and branches until they are merged, yeah?
> 
> Or is there something wrong in my workflow?
> 

I usually put the name of the parent of my local branch, eg. topic 
branch,
for example

   git rebase next-20131010
   git branch -m topic-branch-next-20131010

Once the patchset is sent, I keep rebasing the branch until the patchset 
is empty

   git rebase --onto next-20131011 next-20131010
   git branch -m topic-branch-next-20131011

Once in a while, before the merge window, I'm sending again the 
patchset,
with an update changelog.

Note that, if you're following Linus tree instead,
you don't need to rebase --onto. Just do "simple" rebase.

> Is it possible to use a github repository and just send a "please pull
> from git at github.com...." message to the kernel mailinglist, or will I
> be beaten for this?

If you're going to publish your topic branches, *DON'T EVER REBASE THEM*
without good reason and clear explanation.
So you will probably end up creating multiple topic branches, one for 
each
parent version you're going to target.


But you probably don't have to publish your branches if you're work is 
limited
to a dozen of patches. With more patches, you might ask the maintainer.

Regards.

-- 
Yann Droneaud
OPTEYA