Managing long patch series

[Jim Blandy]

Daniel Jacobowitz <drow at false.org> writes:
> On Fri, Oct 26, 2007 at 11:51:02AM -0700, Jim Blandy wrote:
>> I've tried using quilt, but if one doesn't keep very careful track of
>> what's going on things can get very tangled.  The Emacs mode helped
>> somewhat, but had other flaws, so I set it aside.
>
> I usually do it with quilt plus the emacs mode now.  What flaws?  The
> only one I've noticed as a real inconvenience is trouble adding new
> files, but a talented Lisp hacker could probably fix it in moments.

Quilt (without Emacs support) looked wonderful at first, but then I
found I would get confused by changes made to files outside the patch.

quilt.el fixed that specific problem, but there were also bugs that
got under my skin.  I did look at the lisp, and I was willing to hack
on it a bit, but it was clear the author wasn't very familiar with
Emacs Lisp, and I got worried about getting distracted from work that,
like, someone actually cared about me finishing.  :)

Perhaps I could have made it work, but it left me with the strong
impression that the problem hadn't been thought through carefully.
I'm happy to invest a solid idea that happens to have bugs, but if it
seems like the big idea isn't solid...