how to sync with mainline

[Barry Song]

Thanks.  Amit.

2011/3/9 Lee Jones <lee.jones at linaro.org>:
> On 09/03/11 02:44, Barry Song wrote:
>> Thanks. Amit.
>>
>> 2011/3/8 Amit Kucheria <amit.kucheria at linaro.org>:
>>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Barry Song <21cnbao at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi Lee,
>>>> Great! Thanks a lot. It looks like the communication between linaro
>>>> and mainline is that linaro can backport some bug fixes and features
>>>> from mainline to linaro tree. Linaro doesn't help to review patches
>>>> and send to mainline.
>>> We prefer to see it this way:
>>>
>>> Develop against mainline and get those features integrated there. Keep
>>> linaro-dev in cc if these are features might be something Linaro would
>>> care about.
>>>
>>> The Linaro kernel (maintained by Nicolas Pitre and packaged by John
>>> Rigby) is a sort of technology demonstration to show what we achieve
>>> every 6 months. Some patches in it are backports, others are features
>>> that are still under review in mainline. But I doubt if Nicolas will
>>> take un-reviewed code directly into his tree.
>>>
>>>> Then I have two more questions
>>>> 1. is there a detailed list of backport and bug fix in linaro kernel
>>>> tree since those are the difference between mainline and linaro tree?
>>> 'git log' with the right incantations should be able to tell you that.
>>> Look up Nicolas' email announcements for the high-level overview of
>>> what he has integrated.
>>>
>>>> 2. will linaro accept patches from non-member companies and help to
>>>> maintain, I mean a SoC company which doesn't join linaro?
>>> Linaro doesn't want to maintain dead code that isn't going upstream.
>>> It won't even do it for member companies. At most it is the incubator
>>> where the code lives and gets wider testing _while_ it is being
>>> reworked for mainline.
>> If patches are going mainline, but they are not from members TI,
>> Freescale, ST-E etc, can they be merged into linaro kernel?
>
> I don't see any reason why not, but the overall decision will be made by Nico.

That's important to market.  In case customers of TI, Freescale, ST-E
are also using SoC from non-member companies, since they are using
linaro kernel and utilitis well on TI/Freescale/ST-E,
they want to use the same linaro kernel on non-member chips, if linaro
accepts and maintains non-member patches, then this tree can be useful
and customers can use the only tree as their platform to support both
member chips and non-member chips.

If so, maybe SoC companies don't need to join linaro, but they can get
the benefit of linaro too.  So what's the opinion of Nico?
>