Re: [Gnu-arch-users] into the ether again: wd factor

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Robert Anderson wrote:
> A patch based rcs like arch would be far more useful if people actually 
> made logically distinct, clean patches with it.  This is _much_ harder 
> than it should be.  There's no tools for it.  There really ought to be.

You can always use quilt on top of arch.

> The work pattern of "think of clean, logically distinct feature, code 
> it, commit it" doesn't exist in the wild, at least not in my world.  
> Closer to reality is: start working, realize you really need to factor 
> out a helper function first, return to working, clean up some ugliness 
> in unrelated code that you happened to scroll by, return to working, 
> implement a bunch of debug/diagnostic junk that you'll want out later, 
> return to working, repeat various loosely related tasks until you really 
> shouldn't go any further without committing if you have any remaining 
> self respect.

Workflow looks (something) like this:

  i)   think of a clean logically distinct feature:
       $ quilt new feature.diff
       hack hack hack
  ii)  factor out a helper function:
       $ quilt refresh; quilt pop
       $ vi patches/feature.diff
       (cut hunks from here and paste into a new file: helper.diff)
       $ { echo 'helper.diff'; cat patches/series; } > tmp
       $ mv tmp patches/series
       $ quilt push 2
       return to working
  iii) clean up some ugliness:
       $ quilt refresh; quilt new beautify.diff
       hack hack hack
       $ quilt refresh; quilt pop

etc etc... you get the idea.  When you have a stack of patches in
quilt that you are ready to commit (maybe tossing the debug gunk),
move them out of quilt into arch:

  $ quilt pop -a
  $ quilt push; tla commit && quilt delete
  $ quilt push; tla commit && quilt delete
  ...

Cheers,
        Gary.
--
Gary V. Vaughan      ())_.  address@hidden,gnu.org}
Research Scientist   ( '/   http://tkd.kicks-ass.net
GNU Hacker           / )=   http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool
Technical Author   `(_~)_   http://sources.redhat.com/autobook

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