Fringe Kernel Work

I define "fringe" kernel work as that done by someone who is not a core developer, and who only communicates back to the community via patches. You are probably developing the latest and greatest kernel feature, and need to keep up with the official release while you do it, but be easily able to create your patch set at any time.

Clone Upstream

hg clone http://www.kernel.org/hg/linux-2.6/

This tree you will never touch directly; it is a copy of where Linus is at

Clone Working

hg clone linux-2.6 linux-2.6-working

Start doing your work on the linux-2.6-working tree; make commits as necessary, etc.

Update time

It is now several days/weeks later, and you need to update your changes against the latest upstream versions.

Firstly, update the upstream tree

cd linux-2.6
hg pull

There shouldn't be any conflicts or issues, because you have not changed anything locally

Now create a new update tree, cloned from the latest upstream version (just as you did when you started)

hg clone linux-2.6 linux-2.6-update

Pull into the update tree your dev tree

cd linux-2.6-update
hg pull ../linux-2.6-working

Merge

You will now need to merge the pulled changes into the new working tree. Do this with

hg update -m

Hopefully there won't be any conficts, but if there are you will have to resolve them.

Export your patches

Your changeset should now be on the the tip of the update tree. So the update tree becomes the new working tree, and you can archive the old working tree.

You can export your patches (for sending to lists, etc) with

hg export tip

Continuing Work

Now continue your work in the update tree you just created. You then repeat the process next time you wish to update from upstream.