Re: Updated git HOWTO for kernel hackers

Linus Torvalds wrote:

A few notes on these things:

	git-apply --index /tmp/my.patch

will not only apply the patch (unified patches only!), but will do the
index updates for you while it's at it, so if the patch contains new files
(or it deletes files), you don't need to worry about it.

The output isn't terribly helpful:

[jgarzik@pretzel netdev-2.6]$ git apply --index \
	~/tmp/linux-2.6.12-rc4-cxgb2.1.1.patch
Fragment applied at offset 11

That is worse than no message at all...  fragment?  offset 11?  did it 
work?  Did it apply only a "fragment" of my patch, not the whole thing? 
  I'm worried! </mental monologue>

Outputting the following (stolen from 'git commit') would be far more 
useful:

       modified: Documentation/networking/cxgb.txt
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/Makefile
       deleted:  drivers/net/chelsio/ch_ethtool.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/common.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/cphy.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/cpl5_cmd.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/cxgb2.c
       deleted:  drivers/net/chelsio/cxgb2.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/elmer0.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/espi.c
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/espi.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/gmac.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/mv88x201x.c
       deleted:  drivers/net/chelsio/osdep.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/pm3393.c
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/regs.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/sge.c
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/sge.h
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/subr.c
       modified: drivers/net/chelsio/suni1x10gexp_regs.h
       deleted:  drivers/net/chelsio/tp.c
       deleted:  drivers/net/chelsio/tp.h
       modified: include/linux/pci_ids.h

Also, you can do

	git commit <list-of-files-to-commit>

as a shorthand for

	git-update-cache <list-of-files-to-commit>
	git commit

which some people will probably find more natural.

It would be natural if it functioned like 'bk citool' ;-)

	git commit --figure-out-for-me-what-files-changed

'git diff' can do this, so it's certainly feasible.

Obviously added/removed files would still require git-update-cache or 
git-commit<list of files>.

"git-whatchanged" is useful if you actually want to see what the commits 
_changed_, and then you often want to use the "-p" flag to see it as 
patches. Also, it's worth pointing out the fact that you can limit it to 
certain subdirectories (or individual files) etc, ie:

	git-whatchanged -p drivers/net

since that is often what people want.

But if you just want the log, "git log" is faster and simpler and more 
correct.

I usually want just two things:

1) browse the log

2) list changes in local tree that are not in $remote_tree, a la
	bk changes -L ../linux-2.6

I agree that seeing the merge csets is useful, that is why [being 
ignorant of 'git log'] I used git-changes-script.

	Jeff