[Gnu-arch-users] Combining tagging and committing in a single version

[John Goerzen]

Hello,

The tla tutorial advises that arch is not set up to handle tagging and
committing in a single version very well.  Here is a scenario where I
might be missing the proper way to handle things.

1. I have a branch in my archive tracking the primary Linux kernel sources,
for, say, 2.4.

2. I also have a branch tracking people's patches -- say the Alan Cox
tree.

Now, Alan Cox maintains a diff to the canonical sources, and each of
his new releases is just a new diff.  Easy enough to integrate into
arch -- I'd tag, say, 2.4.10 into the ac branch and then start
applying diffs.

Now what happens when Linus releases 2.4.11?  Well, I update the linus
branch and commit the new version.  But I can't just merge this over
into the ac branch -- it will almost certainly contain changes that
conflict with it, and Alan may even undo some changes with his next
version.  I'd really like to tag it over -- representing that the ac
branch for 2.4.10 is dead ans we're starting over -- and then commit
alan's changes after that.  But I gather this won't work well.

Any ideas on how I would accomplish this nicely?

Another permutation of the same problem:

Sometimes there are pre-releases of kernel versions.  I keep all the
releases in a single branch, and I'd like to keep all the
pre-releases in another.  That way, I don't accidentally get a
pre-release when I check out the most recent revision.

Again, I could do the first prerelease fine.  But a few kernel
versions down the road, how do I manage keeping the prerelease tree
up-to-date?

-- John