Re: Moving ndctl development into the kernel tree?

[Dan Williams]

On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 7:52 PM, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> [ adding Chris ]
>
> On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 4:44 PM, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 3:58 PM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> * Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>> * Like perf, ndctl borrows the sub-command architecture and option
>>>> parsing from git. So, this code could be refactored into something
>>>> shared / generic, i.e. the bits in tools/perf/util/.
>>>
>>> Just as a side note, stacktool (tools/stacktool/) is using the Git sub-command and
>>> options parsing code as well, and it's already sharing it with perf, via the
>>> tools/lib/subcmd/ library.
>>>
>>> ndctl could use that as well.
>>
>> Ah, nice, that refactoring happened about a year after ndctl was born.
>> Which brings up the next question about what to do with the git
>> history, but I'd want to know if ndctl is even welcome upstream before
>> digging any deeper.
>
> I suspect this would be similar to what Chris did to merge btrfs while
> retaining the standalone history. Chris, any pointers on what worked
> well and what if anything you would do differently? I.e. I'm looking
> to use git filter-branch to rewrite ndctl history as if if had always
> been in tools/ndctl in the kernel tree. I found this old thread
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/30/523 and it seems to also recommend
> using an older kernel as the branch base.

So it wasn't as painful as I thought it would be, I just used the
script Linus recommended in that thread. Here is what I came up with
merging the last ndctl release on top of v4.9, and then applying the
pending development patches re-filtered to tools/ndctl:

    https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/djbw/nvdimm.git/log/?h=for-4.14/ndctl

...the next thing would be to rework the versioning to use the kernel
version and switch to using tools/lib/subcmd/.