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Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +00001# Copyright (c) 2011 The Chromium OS Authors.
2#
Wolfgang Denk1a459662013-07-08 09:37:19 +02003# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +00004#
5
6What is this?
7=============
8
9This tool is a Python script which:
10- Creates patch directly from your branch
11- Cleans them up by removing unwanted tags
12- Inserts a cover letter with change lists
13- Runs the patches through checkpatch.pl and its own checks
14- Optionally emails them out to selected people
15
16It is intended to automate patch creation and make it a less
17error-prone process. It is useful for U-Boot and Linux work so far,
18since it uses the checkpatch.pl script.
19
20It is configured almost entirely by tags it finds in your commits.
21This means that you can work on a number of different branches at
22once, and keep the settings with each branch rather than having to
23git format-patch, git send-email, etc. with the correct parameters
24each time. So for example if you put:
25
26Series-to: fred.blogs@napier.co.nz
27
28in one of your commits, the series will be sent there.
29
Doug Anderson21a19d72012-12-03 14:43:16 +000030In Linux this will also call get_maintainer.pl on each of your
31patches automatically.
32
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +000033
34How to use this tool
35====================
36
37This tool requires a certain way of working:
38
39- Maintain a number of branches, one for each patch series you are
40working on
41- Add tags into the commits within each branch to indicate where the
42series should be sent, cover letter, version, etc. Most of these are
43normally in the top commit so it is easy to change them with 'git
44commit --amend'
45- Each branch tracks the upstream branch, so that this script can
46automatically determine the number of commits in it (optional)
47- Check out a branch, and run this script to create and send out your
48patches. Weeks later, change the patches and repeat, knowing that you
49will get a consistent result each time.
50
51
52How to configure it
53===================
54
Simon Glassca706e72013-03-26 13:09:45 +000055For most cases of using patman for U-Boot development, patman will
Doug Anderson21a19d72012-12-03 14:43:16 +000056locate and use the file 'doc/git-mailrc' in your U-Boot directory.
57This contains most of the aliases you will need.
58
59For Linux the 'scripts/get_maintainer.pl' handles figuring out where
60to send patches pretty well.
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +000061
Vikram Narayanan87d65552012-05-23 09:01:06 +000062During the first run patman creates a config file for you by taking the default
63user name and email address from the global .gitconfig file.
64
Vikram Narayanan2b36c752012-05-23 08:58:58 +000065To add your own, create a file ~/.patman like this:
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +000066
67>>>>
68# patman alias file
69
70[alias]
71me: Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
72
73u-boot: U-Boot Mailing List <u-boot@lists.denx.de>
74wolfgang: Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>
75others: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>, Fred Bloggs <f.bloggs@napier.net>
76
77<<<<
78
79Aliases are recursive.
80
81The checkpatch.pl in the U-Boot tools/ subdirectory will be located and
82used. Failing that you can put it into your path or ~/bin/checkpatch.pl
83
84
Doug Anderson8568bae2012-12-03 14:43:17 +000085If you want to change the defaults for patman's command-line arguments,
86you can add a [settings] section to your .patman file. This can be used
87for any command line option by referring to the "dest" for the option in
88patman.py. For reference, the useful ones (at the moment) shown below
89(all with the non-default setting):
90
91>>>
92
93[settings]
94ignore_errors: True
95process_tags: False
96verbose: True
97
98<<<
99
100
Doug Andersona1dcee82012-12-03 14:43:18 +0000101If you want to adjust settings (or aliases) that affect just a single
102project you can add a section that looks like [project_settings] or
103[project_alias]. If you want to use tags for your linux work, you could
104do:
105
106>>>
107
108[linux_settings]
109process_tags: True
110
111<<<
112
113
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000114How to run it
115=============
116
117First do a dry run:
118
Vikram Narayanan330a0912012-04-27 06:39:31 +0000119$ ./tools/patman/patman -n
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000120
121If it can't detect the upstream branch, try telling it how many patches
122there are in your series:
123
Vikram Narayanan330a0912012-04-27 06:39:31 +0000124$ ./tools/patman/patman -n -c5
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000125
126This will create patch files in your current directory and tell you who
127it is thinking of sending them to. Take a look at the patch files.
128
Vikram Narayanan330a0912012-04-27 06:39:31 +0000129$ ./tools/patman/patman -n -c5 -s1
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000130
131Similar to the above, but skip the first commit and take the next 5. This
132is useful if your top commit is for setting up testing.
133
134
135How to add tags
136===============
137
138To make this script useful you must add tags like the following into any
139commit. Most can only appear once in the whole series.
140
141Series-to: email / alias
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200142 Email address / alias to send patch series to (you can add this
143 multiple times)
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000144
145Series-cc: email / alias, ...
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200146 Email address / alias to Cc patch series to (you can add this
147 multiple times)
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000148
149Series-version: n
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200150 Sets the version number of this patch series
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000151
152Series-prefix: prefix
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200153 Sets the subject prefix. Normally empty but it can be RFC for
154 RFC patches, or RESEND if you are being ignored.
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000155
Simon Glassef0e9de2012-09-27 15:06:02 +0000156Series-name: name
157 Sets the name of the series. You don't need to have a name, and
158 patman does not yet use it, but it is convenient to put the branch
159 name here to help you keep track of multiple upstreaming efforts.
160
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000161Cover-letter:
162This is the patch set title
163blah blah
164more blah blah
165END
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200166 Sets the cover letter contents for the series. The first line
167 will become the subject of the cover letter
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000168
Simon Glassfe2f8d92013-03-20 16:43:00 +0000169Cover-letter-cc: email / alias
170 Additional email addresses / aliases to send cover letter to (you
171 can add this multiple times)
172
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000173Series-notes:
174blah blah
175blah blah
176more blah blah
177END
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200178 Sets some notes for the patch series, which you don't want in
179 the commit messages, but do want to send, The notes are joined
180 together and put after the cover letter. Can appear multiple
181 times.
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000182
Albert ARIBAUD5c8fdd92013-11-12 11:14:41 +0100183Commit-notes:
184blah blah
185blah blah
186more blah blah
187END
188 Similar, but for a single commit (patch). These notes will appear
189 immediately below the --- cut in the patch file.
190
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000191 Signed-off-by: Their Name <email>
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200192 A sign-off is added automatically to your patches (this is
193 probably a bug). If you put this tag in your patches, it will
194 override the default signoff that patman automatically adds.
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000195
196 Tested-by: Their Name <email>
Doug Anderson28b35942013-03-15 13:24:05 +0000197 Reviewed-by: Their Name <email>
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000198 Acked-by: Their Name <email>
Doug Anderson28b35942013-03-15 13:24:05 +0000199 These indicate that someone has tested/reviewed/acked your patch.
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200200 When you get this reply on the mailing list, you can add this
201 tag to the relevant commit and the script will include it when
202 you send out the next version. If 'Tested-by:' is set to
203 yourself, it will be removed. No one will believe you.
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000204
205Series-changes: n
206- Guinea pig moved into its cage
207- Other changes ending with a blank line
208<blank line>
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200209 This can appear in any commit. It lists the changes for a
210 particular version n of that commit. The change list is
211 created based on this information. Each commit gets its own
212 change list and also the whole thing is repeated in the cover
213 letter (where duplicate change lines are merged).
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000214
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200215 By adding your change lists into your commits it is easier to
216 keep track of what happened. When you amend a commit, remember
217 to update the log there and then, knowing that the script will
218 do the rest.
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000219
Simon Glass645b2712013-03-26 13:09:44 +0000220 Cc: Their Name <email>
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200221 This copies a single patch to another email address.
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000222
Simon Glass645b2712013-03-26 13:09:44 +0000223Series-process-log: sort, uniq
224 This tells patman to sort and/or uniq the change logs. It is
225 assumed that each change log entry is only a single line long.
226 Use 'sort' to sort the entries, and 'uniq' to include only
227 unique entries. If omitted, no change log processing is done.
228 Separate each tag with a comma.
229
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000230Various other tags are silently removed, like these Chrome OS and
231Gerrit tags:
232
233BUG=...
234TEST=...
235Change-Id:
236Review URL:
237Reviewed-on:
Albert ARIBAUD5c8fdd92013-11-12 11:14:41 +0100238Commit-xxxx: (except Commit-notes)
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000239
240Exercise for the reader: Try adding some tags to one of your current
241patch series and see how the patches turn out.
242
243
244Where Patches Are Sent
245======================
246
Vikram Narayanan17132472012-04-25 05:45:05 +0000247Once the patches are created, patman sends them using git send-email. The
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000248whole series is sent to the recipients in Series-to: and Series-cc.
249You can Cc individual patches to other people with the Cc: tag. Tags in the
250subject are also picked up to Cc patches. For example, a commit like this:
251
252>>>>
253commit 10212537b85ff9b6e09c82045127522c0f0db981
254Author: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200255Date: Mon Nov 7 23:18:44 2011 -0500
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000256
257 x86: arm: add a git mailrc file for maintainers
258
259 This should make sending out e-mails to the right people easier.
260
261 Cc: sandbox, mikef, ag
262 Cc: afleming
263<<<<
264
265will create a patch which is copied to x86, arm, sandbox, mikef, ag and
266afleming.
267
Doug Anderson31187252012-12-03 14:40:43 +0000268If you have a cover letter it will get sent to the union of the CC lists of
Simon Glassfe2f8d92013-03-20 16:43:00 +0000269all of the other patches. If you want to sent it to additional people you
270can add a tag:
271
272Cover-letter-cc: <list of addresses>
273
274These people will get the cover letter even if they are not on the To/Cc
275list for any of the patches.
Doug Anderson31187252012-12-03 14:40:43 +0000276
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000277
278Example Work Flow
279=================
280
281The basic workflow is to create your commits, add some tags to the top
282commit, and type 'patman' to check and send them.
283
284Here is an example workflow for a series of 4 patches. Let's say you have
285these rather contrived patches in the following order in branch us-cmd in
286your tree where 'us' means your upstreaming activity (newest to oldest as
287output by git log --oneline):
288
289 7c7909c wip
290 89234f5 Don't include standard parser if hush is used
291 8d640a7 mmc: sparc: Stop using builtin_run_command()
292 0c859a9 Rename run_command2() to run_command()
293 a74443f sandbox: Rename run_command() to builtin_run_command()
294
295The first patch is some test things that enable your code to be compiled,
296but that you don't want to submit because there is an existing patch for it
297on the list. So you can tell patman to create and check some patches
298(skipping the first patch) with:
299
300 patman -s1 -n
301
302If you want to do all of them including the work-in-progress one, then
303(if you are tracking an upstream branch):
304
305 patman -n
306
307Let's say that patman reports an error in the second patch. Then:
308
309 git rebase -i HEAD~6
310 <change 'pick' to 'edit' in 89234f5>
311 <use editor to make code changes>
312 git add -u
313 git rebase --continue
314
315Now you have an updated patch series. To check it:
316
317 patman -s1 -n
318
319Let's say it is now clean and you want to send it. Now you need to set up
320the destination. So amend the top commit with:
321
322 git commit --amend
323
324Use your editor to add some tags, so that the whole commit message is:
325
326 The current run_command() is really only one of the options, with
327 hush providing the other. It really shouldn't be called directly
328 in case the hush parser is bring used, so rename this function to
329 better explain its purpose.
330
331 Series-to: u-boot
332 Series-cc: bfin, marex
333 Series-prefix: RFC
334 Cover-letter:
335 Unified command execution in one place
336
337 At present two parsers have similar code to execute commands. Also
338 cmd_usage() is called all over the place. This series adds a single
339 function which processes commands called cmd_process().
340 END
341
342 Change-Id: Ica71a14c1f0ecb5650f771a32fecb8d2eb9d8a17
343
344
345You want this to be an RFC and Cc the whole series to the bfin alias and
346to Marek. Two of the patches have tags (those are the bits at the front of
347the subject that say mmc: sparc: and sandbox:), so 8d640a7 will be Cc'd to
348mmc and sparc, and the last one to sandbox.
349
350Now to send the patches, take off the -n flag:
351
352 patman -s1
353
354The patches will be created, shown in your editor, and then sent along with
355the cover letter. Note that patman's tags are automatically removed so that
356people on the list don't see your secret info.
357
358Of course patches often attract comments and you need to make some updates.
359Let's say one person sent comments and you get an Acked-by: on one patch.
360Also, the patch on the list that you were waiting for has been merged,
361so you can drop your wip commit. So you resync with upstream:
362
Wolfgang Denk2790bf62012-04-21 18:55:26 +0200363 git fetch origin (or whatever upstream is called)
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000364 git rebase origin/master
365
366and use git rebase -i to edit the commits, dropping the wip one. You add
367the ack tag to one commit:
368
369 Acked-by: Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
370
371update the Series-cc: in the top commit:
372
373 Series-cc: bfin, marex, Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
374
375and remove the Series-prefix: tag since it it isn't an RFC any more. The
376series is now version two, so the series info in the top commit looks like
377this:
378
379 Series-to: u-boot
380 Series-cc: bfin, marex, Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
381 Series-version: 2
382 Cover-letter:
383 ...
384
385Finally, you need to add a change log to the two commits you changed. You
386add change logs to each individual commit where the changes happened, like
387this:
388
389 Series-changes: 2
390 - Updated the command decoder to reduce code size
391 - Wound the torque propounder up a little more
392
393(note the blank line at the end of the list)
394
395When you run patman it will collect all the change logs from the different
396commits and combine them into the cover letter, if you have one. So finally
397you have a new series of commits:
398
399 faeb973 Don't include standard parser if hush is used
400 1b2f2fe mmc: sparc: Stop using builtin_run_command()
401 cfbe330 Rename run_command2() to run_command()
402 0682677 sandbox: Rename run_command() to builtin_run_command()
403
404so to send them:
405
406 patman
407
408and it will create and send the version 2 series.
409
410General points:
411
4121. When you change back to the us-cmd branch days or weeks later all your
413information is still there, safely stored in the commits. You don't need
414to remember what version you are up to, who you sent the last lot of patches
415to, or anything about the change logs.
416
4172. If you put tags in the subject, patman will Cc the maintainers
418automatically in many cases.
419
4203. If you want to keep the commits from each series you sent so that you can
421compare change and see what you did, you can either create a new branch for
422each version, or just tag the branch before you start changing it:
423
424 git tag sent/us-cmd-rfc
425 ...later...
426 git tag sent/us-cmd-v2
427
4284. If you want to modify the patches a little before sending, you can do
429this in your editor, but be careful!
430
4315. If you want to run git send-email yourself, use the -n flag which will
432print out the command line patman would have used.
433
4346. It is a good idea to add the change log info as you change the commit,
435not later when you can't remember which patch you changed. You can always
436go back and change or remove logs from commits.
437
438
439Other thoughts
440==============
441
442This script has been split into sensible files but still needs work.
443Most of these are indicated by a TODO in the code.
444
445It would be nice if this could handle the In-reply-to side of things.
446
Gerhard Sittigc8605bb2013-07-14 11:27:45 +0200447The tests are incomplete, as is customary. Use the --test flag to run them,
448and make sure you are in the tools/patman directory first:
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000449
450 $ cd /path/to/u-boot
Gerhard Sittigc8605bb2013-07-14 11:27:45 +0200451 $ cd tools/patman
452 $ ./patman --test
Simon Glass0d24de92012-01-14 15:12:45 +0000453
454Error handling doesn't always produce friendly error messages - e.g.
455putting an incorrect tag in a commit may provide a confusing message.
456
457There might be a few other features not mentioned in this README. They
458might be bugs. In particular, tags are case sensitive which is probably
459a bad thing.
460
461
462Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
463v1, v2, 19-Oct-11
464revised v3 24-Nov-11