Git tools for managing patchsets

[Clemens Lang]

Hi,

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 10:29:19AM -0700, Michael wrote:
> My understanding -- and maybe this is my error here -- is that your
> patches have to be constantly rebased onto the current version every
> time the upstream releases a new version.

I think our understanding of what "upstream" is in this sentence
differs. We are *not* talking about patches to be applied to packaged
software, we are talking about changes to the port definitions, i.e. the
Portfiles themselves. "Upstream" in this case means the master branch of
github.com/macports/macports-ports, as opposed to a branch in a fork of
your own that you may be using to prepare changes for a pull request.

> When you rebase, you have new commits, and a new history. So the
> history of how your patchset has changed over time resets at each
> rebase at each new upstream release.

There is no "upstream release", just the continous stream of development
happening in macports-ports. We request that all changes to Portfiles
should cleanly rebase on top of our current HEAD of master, so that we
don't get at least two commits (the change & a merge commit) for each
pull request. Yes, the history of that change while it is developed may
be altered by the rebase, but these changes should ideally not be
long-running patches.

-- 
Clemens