On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 12:44:22PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> There are many situations where patching the kernel involves adding a new
> item to a list, such as:
>
> - adding a makefile line
> - adding a new #include
> - adding a new Kconfig entry
> - adding a new PCI ID
> - adding a record to feature-removal.txt
> - adding a new sysctl table entry
> - etc
>
> Of course, everyone just sticks the new entry at the end of the existing
> entries. This strategy carefully maximises the opportunity for patch
> rejects and leads to unhappiness.
>
> Most of these lists are unordered anyway, so inserting the new item at a
> randomly-chosen position is a better approach than just appending it.
AFAIK some Kconfig entries do have some importance to order (take
kernel/Kconfig.hz for example, though it's not a good one, not long
enough).
I think that random insertions can hurt on the readability side. So, here's
a list of more ways to discuss:
1. How about adding a context-aware logic to the merging process? (i.e,
project-specific "plugins") That is, beside the regular 3-line context,
the merging logic can be a aware of particular file formats, whether it's a
Kconfig tree-like structure or list of lines all starting with a prefix of
'#include'.
2. Alternatively, these special one-liner diff hunks can be generated with
smaller context space (2, 1, or even no lines). This means instead of
adding context-awareness to the merger process, add context-awareness
to the diff generator. The other 'more complex' code modifications hunks
must remain with a context of 3 lines.
3. Another option is to come up with file formats that have '3 space
lines' dilimeters between items (it wouldn't make sense for #include, but
for PCI IDs it might be worth it).
--
Dan Aloni
XIV LTD, http://www.xivstorage.com
da-x (at) monatomic.org, dan (at) xiv.co.il
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