how to fork and record patches to foreign projects

[Attila Lendvai]

> Yes - let’s do this.    So every forked library gets a ‘clasp’ branch.
> Can we then stop using specific commit hashes in the wscript file?

yes (but see below).

we can also use the two combined in the build-refactor: a (branch,
commit) pair to point to a specific revision, yet remain under a named
branch. this is better, because it avoids a 'detached head' state in
the cloned repo, which makes certain operations troublesome. (if you
'git checkout [commit hash]', then the git repo gets into a detached
head state, where e.g. git log is meaningless).

i suggest that all the commits that are meant for inclusion in the
upstreams to be recorded in feature-branches, from where PR's can be
opened to the upstreams.

this way the 'clasp' branch can be "polluted", i.e. it may get all
kinds of merge commits, etc.

if the 'clasp' branch ever gets a git push -f (rewritten history)
though, then the build script will have a hard time to switch
revisions. that can be dealt with, but probably better to avoid this,
because:

i'm not sure getting rid of the specific commit hashes is a good
idea. that specific revision of the clasp codebase expects that
specific commit/revision of the dependency (as opposed to the current
head of its 'clasp' branch). if you ever want to do something like git
bisect, then you want the build script to work with a specific version
of the dependencies.

ideally, we should have reproducible builds, where the build output
artifacts only depend on the source repo state that was used to
initiate the build. this is a far cry for such a complex system like
clasp, but applying whatever is feasible of this philosophy is useful
nevertheless.

i can implement this cleanup of the repos after the build-refactor has
been merged (and when you're available on IRC for quick questions
regarding the status of the repos).

-- 
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
“If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written
yet, then you must write it.”
	— Toni Morrison [same with software — François-René Rideau (Faré)]