Query on git usage for creating patch with incremental commits

Kumar Amit Mehta gmate.amit at gmail.com
Fri Dec 12 09:58:25 EST 2014


Hi,

I know that it's not a typical Linux kernel related query but I reckon
that people involved in Linux kernel testing/development might have
gotten into similar situation. So, please bear with me for this rather
generic framework related query.

The scenario:
1: Cloned linux-next at time T1
$ git clone blahblah

2: Created a branch called development at T2
$ git checkout -b development

3: Made change1 in development branch and did a commit at T3
$ git commit -a

4: Made another commit in development branch and did another commit
at time T4, but during this development phase, *some* of the changes
that I made during my previous commit at time T3 were wrong, so had to
remove *some* of the changes
$ git commit -a

5: Now I create a branch called test, based off the master
$ git checkout -b test origin/master

5: So my test branch(and also the master branch) is two commits behind the
development branch. Now I wish to create a patch, based on my changes in
development branch and apply that patch to my test branch for further
testing. 

$ git format-patch origin/master -o patches
The above command creates two patches, which I need to apply in an
increasing order(0001 ---> 0002), otherwise, the patch won't work.

So far so good, but what If, I am not particularly proud of the first
patch, but have to send that anyway, If my patches are to be applied.
Another approach would be to create another branch, say development-again,
based of origin/master and make the necessary changes and then just
create one patch file. But I was wondering that while doing development,
don't we make commits in our working branches, which we think is
correct, only to find it ridiculous later (say after few more commits
in future) ? And what to do in such scenario ? Or how to use git to
solve such scenario.

Thanks,
Kumar



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