On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 10:22:20AM +0100, Steve Keller wrote:
> I wonder how git supports developing a series of small patches. In my
> usual development I go back and forth along a series of patches before
> I can commit them all. I use quilt for that.
>
> Say I want to add feature FOO and start a patch "FOO" editing some
> source file. In the process of doing so I realize that I need an
> extension of some function to base my patch on, so I do "quilt pop" to
> undo patch FOO and insert a new patch BAR and then re-apply FOO by
> calling quilt push. No I can use the new extension from BAR in my
> current patch FOO. The patch series often contains quite a number of
> patches and I push, pop, and edit these patches quite often. Only
> when everything is done I use git commit all the patches into the
> repository.
>
> My question is whether there is git functionality to replace quilt.
> Or is the combination of quilt and git common?
Another responder mentioned "rebase -i", which is the most direct
equivalent. But on a smaller scale, also look at "git add -p", which
lets you selectively stage hunks for commit.
So quite often my flow is something like:
1. Messy writing and refactoring, while I get a handle on what my
changes are going to be.
2. "git add -p" to pull out some hunks related to refactoring, then
"git commit" to give it a rough commit message.
3. Repeat step 2 (with maybe some more step 1 in between) as necessary
until you have a sequence of rough patches.
4. Revisit each patch individually with "rebase -i", possibly
re-ordering, fixing bugs, fleshing out commit messages, etc.
Another useful tool here is:
git rebase -x "make test"
which makes sure that the intermediate steps are all correct.
-Peff
