Summary

Git is the new SCM used by the Linux kernel developers. Ubuntu has adopted this tool for our own Linux kernel source code so that we can interact better with the community and the other kernel developers.

Getting GIT

To obtain the git binaries, please go to [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git-core kernel.org] and download the latest source. Folow the build instructions included, and make sure to install them in a location in your PATH.

Getting the Ubuntu Linux kernel repo

The Ubuntu Linux kernel git repository is located at rsync://rsync.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bcollins/ubuntu-2.6.git. To download a local copy of the repo, use this command:

  git clone rsync://rsync.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bcollins/ubuntu-2.6.git ubuntu-2.6

This will take some time depending on your connection. There's around 110Megs of data to download currently (and this always increases).

Once this is complete, you can keep your tree up-to-date by running this command:

  git pull

Pushing changes to the main repo

Since the main repo is not publicly writable, the primary means for sending patches to the kernel team is using "git-format-patch". The output from this command can then be sent to the [mailto:kernel-team@lists.ubuntu.com kernel-team] mailing list.

Alternatively, if you have a publicly available git repository for which changes can be pulled from, you can use "git-request-pull" to generate an email message to send to the [mailto:kernel-team@lists.ubuntu.com kernel-team] mailing list.

Commit templates

In "debian/commit-templates/" there are several templates that must be used when commiting changes that you expect to be integrated with the Ubuntu kernel repo. The commit templates contain comments for how to fill out the required information. Also note that all commits must have a Signed-off-by line (the "-s" option to "git-commit"). An example commit log will look like such:

  [UBUNTU:scsi] My cool change to the scsi subsystem

  UpstreamStatus: Merged with 2.6.15-rc3

  My cool change to the scsi subsystem makes scsi transfers increase magically to 1.7Gb/sec.

  Signed-off-by: Joe Cool Hacker <jch@reet.com>

More information

Please read the documentation included with the git source for more details on git commands.

CategoryKernel