Re: nsmux: Integration with the Hurd Git Repository

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Mon, Sep 07, 2009 at 11:00:40PM +0300, Sergiu Ivanov wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 07, 2009 at 01:53:08AM +0200, olafBuddenhagen@gmx.net
> wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 02:30:46PM +0300, Sergiu Ivanov wrote:

> > > Note that as opposed to some other translators (like Zheng's
> > > eth-multiplexer), both unionfs and nsmux were designed to be
> > > stand-alone,
> > 
> > ...which is the reason why I still haven't tested nsmux -- I'm still
> > waiting for you to integrate it in the Hurd tree, as I requested
> > again and again.
> 
> Yep, I can't say I don't remember that you have been asking me to do
> this for a long time already.  I think I can try to do this in the
> nearest future -- right after I have several questions answered.
> 
> Firstly, as I have already said (and as you have already seen), the
> majority of my commits to my nsmux repository are very ugly.
> Everything is on a single branch, the commits are not grouped together
> by functionality, etc.  I remember someone (either you or Thomas)
> suggesting to throw away this dirty history and just start doing
> normal source code management from what I have now.  Is this an
> option, or should I try to tidy up the repository, or should I leave
> things as they are?

Yes: I said that considering the situation, it might be best to throw
away the existing history, and add the code in a single commit.

Sure, it would be nice if the various changes that happened in the past
were reflected in the history -- but this would be a lot of work; and I
don't think it's really worth the effort in this case. The code is still
rather experimental; and AFAIK nobody ever tested it but yourself. All
in all, it doesn't seem very likely that we will ever want to track
regressions in the old commits...

> Another serious issue is that my source code is full of weird stuff:
> comment lines, improperly formatted comments, etc.  Should I try to
> correct these?

Yes, you should definitely clean it up. This can probably happen after
the merge -- especially if you also clean up the code itself, not only
comments: in this case, it might indeed become necessary to track
regressions in the cleanups :-)

> If so, how should this go: a clean-up patch or a patch series?

One patch for each type of cleanup I'd say.

> And the last question is about the integration itself: how exactly do
> I take my nsmux git repository and integrate it into the Hurd git
> repository?

I've never done this myself, so I actually don't know for sure. I
believe that it should be possible to simply do a normal merge. The
tricky part is that after the merge the stuff needs to be in a
subdirectory, while in the original repository it was top-level; so
first it's necessary to move the code. Making the move part of the merge
commit itself (rather than an extra commit before the merge) might
require some magic...

But if we drop the old history, we don't need any of that. Just copy the
whole directory (dropping the original .git/ ), add it to the index, and
commit, with something like "initial import of nsmux" as commit message.

Of course, you also need to adapt the build system somewhere along the
way...

-antrik-