Re: Merging glibc-ports repo

[Roland McGrath <roland at hack dot frob dot com>]

> Yes. I can do this as part of the 2.16 release process.
> 
> Could you please start a wiki page for the transition if we haven't already?
> 
> Roland, Community,
> 
> Any objections to do doing the merge as outlined above?

That sounds generally reasonable to me.  I would like to see the plan
modified in a couple of simple ways.

1. At the end of everything, the master branch of ports should contain
   nothing but the README-moved file.  This can be delayed a while,
   and copious tags made in that repo beforehand so that anybody with
   an old ports checkout with local modifications can do 'git checkout
   end-of-ports' to pin their checkout to a state with all the files
   still there, and then collect their local changes easily into
   patches with various git commands to move them over to their main
   libc checkout.  This can be delayed as long as necessary for
   everyone to have coped with the transition.  But the state we leave
   in glibc-ports.git#master for ever after should contain no real
   files whatsoever, not any final state of all those files.  There
   will be for ever after a tag at that final-but-all-still-there
   state so that anybody can recover it trivially.

2. There should be an absolute moratorium on all commits to the master
   branch in the libc repository for at least a day or two before and
   after the merge work.  When the people doing the legwork think it's
   all set, they should leave a 'before' branch and an 'after' branch
   that are the state of master before and after the repo merge.  Then
   there must be a period where all the major active contributors can
   verify that everything looks sane, at least a full day, and as much
   longer as it takes for everbody relevant to post their assent.
   Only then will 'after' become 'master' and normal operations
   resume.

   During the interregnum, people can of course continue to post
   patches, use private branches to share, etc.


Thanks,
Roland