Re: Suggestion for cherry-picking to stable branches

[Bruno Haible]

Sam James wrote:
> Could I propose that cherry-picks to the stable-XXX branches are done
> with 'git cherry-pick -x'? This is often done in projects following a
> gnulib-like model.
> 
> git will append '(cherry picked from commit ...)' to the commit message
> which makes it easy to compare with the original commit and distinguish
> branch-only commits from backports.

All commits to the stable branches [1] are backports. There are no commits
that are created for the branch specifically.

But while doing these backports, I have to make several adjustments:
  - Combine 2 or more commits from 'master' if the first of these commits
    introduced a regression that was only fixed later on.
  - Assign new '# serial' numbers to the *.m4 files.
  - Omit modifications to modules that did not exist when the stable branch
    was forked off.
  - Omit documentation changes that don't apply.
  - Fix merge conflicts.
  - For stable branches from the previous year: Update the (C) year
    of each modified file.

I don't think that a tool like 'git cherry-pick' will allow me to have
the needed flexibility for this process.

Bruno

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/Stable-Branches.html