[gentoo-dev] gentoo git workflow

[hasufell]

Rich Freeman:
>
> This is one of the blockers.  We haven't actually decided how we want
> to use git.
>

There are IMO 3 main things to consider for a git workflow:
* commit policy
* branching model
* remote model
(and history format somewhere implicitly)

Deciding on a _commit policy_ should be fairly straightforward and we
already have one point
* gpg sign every commit (unless it's a merged branch, then we only care
about the merge commit)

More things to consider for commit policy are:
* commit message format (line length, maybe prepend category/PN?)
* do we expect repoman to run successfully for every commit (I'd say no)?
* additional information that must be provided
* when to force/avoid merge commits

Deciding on _branching model_ should be pretty easy here too. We are
mainly working on master and there may be developer-specific branches etc.
History does not need to be linear.
Creating additional branches is up to developers and there are no
specific rules about that.

The _remote model_ is: use a central repository with every developer
having push access. I think this is pretty reasonable for our use case,
although I'd love to see a linux-like workflow with enforced reviews
that propagate through project members/leads. But I'm not sure we need
that much overhead, except for non-trivial stuff like eclasses where we
already require reviews (well, more or less).


The only hard part is that people have to know the differences between
merging/rebasing, fast-forward merges, non-fast-forward merges etc. and
when and when not to do them.

'git rebase' is a powerful thing, but also pretty good to mess up your
local history if used wrong.

I think we can write up a gentoo-specific guide in 2-3 weeks.