Re: [kernel.org users] b4 can now explode a pull request into an mbox file with patches

["Greg KH" <greg@kroah.com>]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 06:19:26PM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> Hi, all:
> 
> While working on "pull-request exploder" stuff for achiving on 
> lore.kernel.org, I realized that this may be a useful set of features 
> for developers as well, as I imagine you sometimes want to comment on 
> something in a pull request and end up having to go hunting for the 
> proper commit, from/to/cc, etc information.
> 
> So, the master branch of b4 just landed initial "b4 pr" implementation, 
> which will let you do "b4 pr --explode <msgid>" to get an mbox file
> with that pull request converted into a patch series with various 
> headers set so it's convenient to fire off "mutt -f" and reply to the 
> exact bits that you want and send it to the proper places.
> 
> In more details:
> 
> b4 pr <msgid>
> 
>   - downloads that message
>   - parses the pull request
>   - checks that the remote tip is where the message says it should be
>   - makes sure the base-commit is present in the tree
>   - makes sure the tip commit isn't already in one of the branches
>   - checks if FETCH_HEAD already is at that commit
>   - if all looks good, performs a git fetch
>   - (optionally, can then do a checkout into a branch for you)
> 
> b4 pr --check <msgid>
> 
>   Runs all of the checks above, but doesn't perform the actual fetch.
>   Useful if you don't remember if you've already processed a pull
>   request or not.
> 
> b4 pr --explode <msgid>
> 
>   Runs basic sanity checks and then:
> 
>   - performs a git fetch
>   - runs a "git format-patch" for base-commit..FETCH_HEAD
>   - adds the same to/from/cc headers as in the pull request
>   - properly threads each patch below the pull request
>   - saves that into a <msgid>.mbox file
> 
> I mostly imagine that it's the --explode functionality that you'd be 
> interested in, but since that required writing most of the other 
> pull-request handling functionality, there's basic handling for that as 
> well.
> 
> Please let me know if that is useful.

Both sound really useful, thanks!

Now to just wait for someone to send me a pull request so I can try it
out, I just had caught up on all of them last night :)

greg k-h