xref: /openbmc/u-boot/tools/patman/README (revision 3b291216)
1# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
2# Copyright (c) 2011 The Chromium OS Authors.
3
4What is this?
5=============
6
7This tool is a Python script which:
8- Creates patch directly from your branch
9- Cleans them up by removing unwanted tags
10- Inserts a cover letter with change lists
11- Runs the patches through checkpatch.pl and its own checks
12- Optionally emails them out to selected people
13
14It is intended to automate patch creation and make it a less
15error-prone process. It is useful for U-Boot and Linux work so far,
16since it uses the checkpatch.pl script.
17
18It is configured almost entirely by tags it finds in your commits.
19This means that you can work on a number of different branches at
20once, and keep the settings with each branch rather than having to
21git format-patch, git send-email, etc. with the correct parameters
22each time. So for example if you put:
23
24Series-to: fred.blogs@napier.co.nz
25
26in one of your commits, the series will be sent there.
27
28In Linux and U-Boot this will also call get_maintainer.pl on each of your
29patches automatically (unless you use -m to disable this).
30
31
32How to use this tool
33====================
34
35This tool requires a certain way of working:
36
37- Maintain a number of branches, one for each patch series you are
38working on
39- Add tags into the commits within each branch to indicate where the
40series should be sent, cover letter, version, etc. Most of these are
41normally in the top commit so it is easy to change them with 'git
42commit --amend'
43- Each branch tracks the upstream branch, so that this script can
44automatically determine the number of commits in it (optional)
45- Check out a branch, and run this script to create and send out your
46patches. Weeks later, change the patches and repeat, knowing that you
47will get a consistent result each time.
48
49
50How to configure it
51===================
52
53For most cases of using patman for U-Boot development, patman can use the
54file 'doc/git-mailrc' in your U-Boot directory to supply the email aliases
55you need. To make this work, tell git where to find the file by typing
56this once:
57
58    git config sendemail.aliasesfile doc/git-mailrc
59
60For both Linux and U-Boot the 'scripts/get_maintainer.pl' handles figuring
61out where to send patches pretty well.
62
63During the first run patman creates a config file for you by taking the default
64user name and email address from the global .gitconfig file.
65
66To add your own, create a file ~/.patman like this:
67
68>>>>
69# patman alias file
70
71[alias]
72me: Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
73
74u-boot: U-Boot Mailing List <u-boot@lists.denx.de>
75wolfgang: Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>
76others: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>, Fred Bloggs <f.bloggs@napier.net>
77
78<<<<
79
80Aliases are recursive.
81
82The checkpatch.pl in the U-Boot tools/ subdirectory will be located and
83used. Failing that you can put it into your path or ~/bin/checkpatch.pl
84
85If you want to avoid sending patches to email addresses that are picked up
86by patman but are known to bounce you can add a [bounces] section to your
87.patman file. Unlike the [alias] section these are simple key: value pairs
88that are not recursive.
89
90>>>
91
92[bounces]
93gonefishing: Fred Bloggs <f.bloggs@napier.net>
94
95<<<
96
97
98If you want to change the defaults for patman's command-line arguments,
99you can add a [settings] section to your .patman file.  This can be used
100for any command line option by referring to the "dest" for the option in
101patman.py.  For reference, the useful ones (at the moment) shown below
102(all with the non-default setting):
103
104>>>
105
106[settings]
107ignore_errors: True
108process_tags: False
109verbose: True
110
111<<<
112
113
114If you want to adjust settings (or aliases) that affect just a single
115project you can add a section that looks like [project_settings] or
116[project_alias].  If you want to use tags for your linux work, you could
117do:
118
119>>>
120
121[linux_settings]
122process_tags: True
123
124<<<
125
126
127How to run it
128=============
129
130First do a dry run:
131
132$ ./tools/patman/patman -n
133
134If it can't detect the upstream branch, try telling it how many patches
135there are in your series:
136
137$ ./tools/patman/patman -n -c5
138
139This will create patch files in your current directory and tell you who
140it is thinking of sending them to. Take a look at the patch files.
141
142$ ./tools/patman/patman -n -c5 -s1
143
144Similar to the above, but skip the first commit and take the next 5. This
145is useful if your top commit is for setting up testing.
146
147
148How to install it
149=================
150
151The most up to date version of patman can be found in the U-Boot sources.
152However to use it on other projects it may be more convenient to install it as
153a standalone application. A distutils installer is included, this can be used
154to install patman:
155
156$ cd tools/patman && python setup.py install
157
158
159How to add tags
160===============
161
162To make this script useful you must add tags like the following into any
163commit. Most can only appear once in the whole series.
164
165Series-to: email / alias
166	Email address / alias to send patch series to (you can add this
167	multiple times)
168
169Series-cc: email / alias, ...
170	Email address / alias to Cc patch series to (you can add this
171	multiple times)
172
173Series-version: n
174	Sets the version number of this patch series
175
176Series-prefix: prefix
177	Sets the subject prefix. Normally empty but it can be RFC for
178	RFC patches, or RESEND if you are being ignored. The patch subject
179	is like [RFC PATCH] or [RESEND PATCH].
180	In the meantime, git format.subjectprefix option will be added as
181	well. If your format.subjectprefix is set to InternalProject, then
182	the patch shows like: [InternalProject][RFC/RESEND PATCH]
183
184Series-name: name
185	Sets the name of the series. You don't need to have a name, and
186	patman does not yet use it, but it is convenient to put the branch
187	name here to help you keep track of multiple upstreaming efforts.
188
189Cover-letter:
190This is the patch set title
191blah blah
192more blah blah
193END
194	Sets the cover letter contents for the series. The first line
195	will become the subject of the cover letter
196
197Cover-letter-cc: email / alias
198	Additional email addresses / aliases to send cover letter to (you
199	can add this multiple times)
200
201Series-notes:
202blah blah
203blah blah
204more blah blah
205END
206	Sets some notes for the patch series, which you don't want in
207	the commit messages, but do want to send, The notes are joined
208	together and put after the cover letter. Can appear multiple
209	times.
210
211Commit-notes:
212blah blah
213blah blah
214more blah blah
215END
216	Similar, but for a single commit (patch). These notes will appear
217	immediately below the --- cut in the patch file.
218
219 Signed-off-by: Their Name <email>
220	A sign-off is added automatically to your patches (this is
221	probably a bug). If you put this tag in your patches, it will
222	override the default signoff that patman automatically adds.
223	Multiple duplicate signoffs will be removed.
224
225 Tested-by: Their Name <email>
226 Reviewed-by: Their Name <email>
227 Acked-by: Their Name <email>
228	These indicate that someone has tested/reviewed/acked your patch.
229	When you get this reply on the mailing list, you can add this
230	tag to the relevant commit and the script will include it when
231	you send out the next version. If 'Tested-by:' is set to
232	yourself, it will be removed. No one will believe you.
233
234Series-changes: n
235- Guinea pig moved into its cage
236- Other changes ending with a blank line
237<blank line>
238	This can appear in any commit. It lists the changes for a
239	particular version n of that commit. The change list is
240	created based on this information. Each commit gets its own
241	change list and also the whole thing is repeated in the cover
242	letter (where duplicate change lines are merged).
243
244	By adding your change lists into your commits it is easier to
245	keep track of what happened. When you amend a commit, remember
246	to update the log there and then, knowing that the script will
247	do the rest.
248
249Patch-cc: Their Name <email>
250	This copies a single patch to another email address. Note that the
251	Cc: used by git send-email is ignored by patman, but will be
252	interpreted by git send-email if you use it.
253
254Series-process-log: sort, uniq
255	This tells patman to sort and/or uniq the change logs. It is
256	assumed that each change log entry is only a single line long.
257	Use 'sort' to sort the entries, and 'uniq' to include only
258	unique entries. If omitted, no change log processing is done.
259	Separate each tag with a comma.
260
261Various other tags are silently removed, like these Chrome OS and
262Gerrit tags:
263
264BUG=...
265TEST=...
266Change-Id:
267Review URL:
268Reviewed-on:
269Commit-xxxx: (except Commit-notes)
270
271Exercise for the reader: Try adding some tags to one of your current
272patch series and see how the patches turn out.
273
274
275Where Patches Are Sent
276======================
277
278Once the patches are created, patman sends them using git send-email. The
279whole series is sent to the recipients in Series-to: and Series-cc.
280You can Cc individual patches to other people with the Patch-cc: tag. Tags
281in the subject are also picked up to Cc patches. For example, a commit like
282this:
283
284>>>>
285commit 10212537b85ff9b6e09c82045127522c0f0db981
286Author: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>
287Date:	Mon Nov 7 23:18:44 2011 -0500
288
289    x86: arm: add a git mailrc file for maintainers
290
291    This should make sending out e-mails to the right people easier.
292
293    Patch-cc: sandbox, mikef, ag
294    Patch-cc: afleming
295<<<<
296
297will create a patch which is copied to x86, arm, sandbox, mikef, ag and
298afleming.
299
300If you have a cover letter it will get sent to the union of the Patch-cc
301lists of all of the other patches. If you want to sent it to additional
302people you can add a tag:
303
304Cover-letter-cc: <list of addresses>
305
306These people will get the cover letter even if they are not on the To/Cc
307list for any of the patches.
308
309
310Example Work Flow
311=================
312
313The basic workflow is to create your commits, add some tags to the top
314commit, and type 'patman' to check and send them.
315
316Here is an example workflow for a series of 4 patches. Let's say you have
317these rather contrived patches in the following order in branch us-cmd in
318your tree where 'us' means your upstreaming activity (newest to oldest as
319output by git log --oneline):
320
321    7c7909c wip
322    89234f5 Don't include standard parser if hush is used
323    8d640a7 mmc: sparc: Stop using builtin_run_command()
324    0c859a9 Rename run_command2() to run_command()
325    a74443f sandbox: Rename run_command() to builtin_run_command()
326
327The first patch is some test things that enable your code to be compiled,
328but that you don't want to submit because there is an existing patch for it
329on the list. So you can tell patman to create and check some patches
330(skipping the first patch) with:
331
332    patman -s1 -n
333
334If you want to do all of them including the work-in-progress one, then
335(if you are tracking an upstream branch):
336
337    patman -n
338
339Let's say that patman reports an error in the second patch. Then:
340
341    git rebase -i HEAD~6
342    <change 'pick' to 'edit' in 89234f5>
343    <use editor to make code changes>
344    git add -u
345    git rebase --continue
346
347Now you have an updated patch series. To check it:
348
349    patman -s1 -n
350
351Let's say it is now clean and you want to send it. Now you need to set up
352the destination. So amend the top commit with:
353
354    git commit --amend
355
356Use your editor to add some tags, so that the whole commit message is:
357
358    The current run_command() is really only one of the options, with
359    hush providing the other. It really shouldn't be called directly
360    in case the hush parser is bring used, so rename this function to
361    better explain its purpose.
362
363    Series-to: u-boot
364    Series-cc: bfin, marex
365    Series-prefix: RFC
366    Cover-letter:
367    Unified command execution in one place
368
369    At present two parsers have similar code to execute commands. Also
370    cmd_usage() is called all over the place. This series adds a single
371    function which processes commands called cmd_process().
372    END
373
374    Change-Id: Ica71a14c1f0ecb5650f771a32fecb8d2eb9d8a17
375
376
377You want this to be an RFC and Cc the whole series to the bfin alias and
378to Marek. Two of the patches have tags (those are the bits at the front of
379the subject that say mmc: sparc: and sandbox:), so 8d640a7 will be Cc'd to
380mmc and sparc, and the last one to sandbox.
381
382Now to send the patches, take off the -n flag:
383
384   patman -s1
385
386The patches will be created, shown in your editor, and then sent along with
387the cover letter. Note that patman's tags are automatically removed so that
388people on the list don't see your secret info.
389
390Of course patches often attract comments and you need to make some updates.
391Let's say one person sent comments and you get an Acked-by: on one patch.
392Also, the patch on the list that you were waiting for has been merged,
393so you can drop your wip commit. So you resync with upstream:
394
395    git fetch origin		(or whatever upstream is called)
396    git rebase origin/master
397
398and use git rebase -i to edit the commits, dropping the wip one. You add
399the ack tag to one commit:
400
401    Acked-by: Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
402
403update the Series-cc: in the top commit:
404
405    Series-cc: bfin, marex, Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
406
407and remove the Series-prefix: tag since it it isn't an RFC any more. The
408series is now version two, so the series info in the top commit looks like
409this:
410
411    Series-to: u-boot
412    Series-cc: bfin, marex, Heiko Schocher <hs@denx.de>
413    Series-version: 2
414    Cover-letter:
415    ...
416
417Finally, you need to add a change log to the two commits you changed. You
418add change logs to each individual commit where the changes happened, like
419this:
420
421    Series-changes: 2
422    - Updated the command decoder to reduce code size
423    - Wound the torque propounder up a little more
424
425(note the blank line at the end of the list)
426
427When you run patman it will collect all the change logs from the different
428commits and combine them into the cover letter, if you have one. So finally
429you have a new series of commits:
430
431    faeb973 Don't include standard parser if hush is used
432    1b2f2fe mmc: sparc: Stop using builtin_run_command()
433    cfbe330 Rename run_command2() to run_command()
434    0682677 sandbox: Rename run_command() to builtin_run_command()
435
436so to send them:
437
438    patman
439
440and it will create and send the version 2 series.
441
442General points:
443
4441. When you change back to the us-cmd branch days or weeks later all your
445information is still there, safely stored in the commits. You don't need
446to remember what version you are up to, who you sent the last lot of patches
447to, or anything about the change logs.
448
4492. If you put tags in the subject, patman will Cc the maintainers
450automatically in many cases.
451
4523. If you want to keep the commits from each series you sent so that you can
453compare change and see what you did, you can either create a new branch for
454each version, or just tag the branch before you start changing it:
455
456    git tag sent/us-cmd-rfc
457    ...later...
458    git tag sent/us-cmd-v2
459
4604. If you want to modify the patches a little before sending, you can do
461this in your editor, but be careful!
462
4635. If you want to run git send-email yourself, use the -n flag which will
464print out the command line patman would have used.
465
4666. It is a good idea to add the change log info as you change the commit,
467not later when you can't remember which patch you changed. You can always
468go back and change or remove logs from commits.
469
470
471Other thoughts
472==============
473
474This script has been split into sensible files but still needs work.
475Most of these are indicated by a TODO in the code.
476
477It would be nice if this could handle the In-reply-to side of things.
478
479The tests are incomplete, as is customary. Use the --test flag to run them,
480and make sure you are in the tools/patman directory first:
481
482    $ cd /path/to/u-boot
483    $ cd tools/patman
484    $ ./patman --test
485
486Error handling doesn't always produce friendly error messages - e.g.
487putting an incorrect tag in a commit may provide a confusing message.
488
489There might be a few other features not mentioned in this README. They
490might be bugs. In particular, tags are case sensitive which is probably
491a bad thing.
492
493
494Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
495v1, v2, 19-Oct-11
496revised v3 24-Nov-11
497