Bootstrapping into git, commit gripes at me

In working through a usage example on my way to producing bonafide
patches, I've found that commit is complaining.  Here's what I've done.

  o Fetched and built cogito-0.12
  o Fetched (rsync) Linus' tree
  o Created a working directory, linux-2.6
  o linked .git in the working directory to the .git directory fetched
    from the net.
  o # git checkout -f v2.6.11
  o # cat ../old-patch-file | patch -p1

Then, according to Jeff's instructions, I have to perform
get-update-cache with the name of each file I changed.  Is that really
the way?

  o # git-update-cache LIST_OF_CHANGED_FILES

Now I commit.

  o # git commit

I am presented with an editor session with the list of changed files
already present.  IfI add a comment and leave the editor, I'm told

   fatal: 5dc01c595e6c6ec9ccda4f6f69c131c0dd945f8c is not a valid 'commit' object

If I don't edit the comment, it doesn't give an error but I don't
think the changes are committed because I can invoke git commit again.

Am I off track?

Cheers.

P.S.  vger isn't letting me subscribe ATM.  Please copy me with
      replies.

On Fri, 8 Jul 2005, Marc Singer wrote:

In working through a usage example on my way to producing bonafide
patches, I've found that commit is complaining.  Here's what I've done.

  o Fetched and built cogito-0.12
  o Fetched (rsync) Linus' tree
  o Created a working directory, linux-2.6
  o linked .git in the working directory to the .git directory fetched
    from the net.
  o # git checkout -f v2.6.11

This won't work.

v2.6.11 isn't a commit, it's a tree, and things will go downhill from 
there. 

Can you base it on 2.6.12-rc2 or later? That's the earliest with some real 
git history.

		Linus

On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 06:43:54PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:

On Fri, 8 Jul 2005, Marc Singer wrote:

quoted

In working through a usage example on my way to producing bonafide
patches, I've found that commit is complaining.  Here's what I've done.

  o Fetched and built cogito-0.12
  o Fetched (rsync) Linus' tree
  o Created a working directory, linux-2.6
  o linked .git in the working directory to the .git directory fetched
    from the net.
  o # git checkout -f v2.6.11

This won't work.

v2.6.11 isn't a commit, it's a tree, and things will go downhill from 
there. 

Can you base it on 2.6.12-rc2 or later? That's the earliest with some real 
git history.

I picked 2.6.12

  # git checkout -f v2.6.12

applied the patch and was greeted with an error about being unable to
commit telling me that I LONG_HEX_NUMBER is not a valid commit object.
Isn't 2.6.12 later than 2.6.12-rcX?

On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, Marc Singer wrote:

I picked 2.6.12

  # git checkout -f v2.6.12

applied the patch and was greeted with an error about being unable to
commit telling me that I LONG_HEX_NUMBER is not a valid commit object.
Isn't 2.6.12 later than 2.6.12-rcX?

Yes.

However, that's not how "git checkout" ends up working, which is probably 
(almost certainly) a misfeature of git checkout. In particular, when you 
use a tag to checkout something, it will checkout the _state_ at that 
point (ie v2.6.12), but it won't have reset your HEAD to point to it.

And your earlier adventures made your HEAD be something that isn't a
commit (although I quite frankly don't know quite how you succeeded at
that: "git checkout" should refuse to write a HEAD unless you check out a
specific branch, and all branch pointers are proper commit points).

Anyway, here's how you fix it right now, and I'll have to figure out how 
to make a nice interface:

	#
	# Reset the "master" branch to v2.6.12
	#
	git-rev-list --max-count=1 v2.6.12 > .git/refs/heads/master

	#
	# Switch to the master branch
	#
	git checkout -f master

which should get you to be at a known point (which is v2.6.12).

		Linus