Re: [GIT pull] x86 fixes for 2.6.26

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 08:19:04PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > Why do you consider rebasing topic branches a bad thing?
> 
> Rebasing branches is absolutely not a bad thing for individual developers.
> 
> But it *is* a bad thing for a subsystem maintainer.

Right, but so long as a subsystem maintainer doesn't publish his/her
topic branches, and only sends out patches on their topic branches for
discussion via e-mail, they're fine, right?  They can just rebase up
until the point where the patch goes on a non-'pu' or non-'linux-next'
branch.

Basically, this would be the subsystem maintainer sometimes wearing an
"end-point-developer" hat, and sometimes wearing a "subsystem
maintainer" hat.  So rebasing is fine as long as it's clear that it's
happening on branches which are not meant as a base for
submaintainers.  

I believe Junio does this himself for his own topic branches while
developing git, yes?  And that's probably a good reason for him not
actually *publishing* any of his topic branches, and only the 'pu'
branch, which is well known to be a bad idea for folks to use as a
branch point, since it is constantly getting rebased.

> And I realize that the x86 tree doesn't do git merges from other 
> sub-maintaines of x86 stuff, and I think that's a problem waiting to 
> happen. It's not a problem as long as Ingo and Thomas are on the net every 
> single day, 12 hours a day, and respond to everything. But speaking from 
> experience, you can try to do that for a decade, but it won't really work.
> 
> I've talked to Ingo about this a bit, and I'm personally fairly convinced 
> that part of the friction with Ingo has been that micro-management on a 
> per-patch level. I should know. I used to do it myself. And I still do it, 
> but now I do it only for really "core" stuff. So now I get involved in 
> stuff like really core VM locking, or the whole BKL thing, but on the 
> whole I try to be the anti-thesis of a micro-manager, and just pull from 
> the submaintainers.

Heh, can't really argue with your point here.

							- Ted
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