On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 10:09:40PM -0500, Don Imus wrote:
> I've got an old Linux 2.4.18 source tree I downloaded from a vendor who
> sells devices using MIPS processors with embedded Linux running on them.
>
> There are clearly places in the code where the vendor has made changes.
> Unfotunately, the vendor used their own CVS and every tagged file
> shows revision 1.1.1.1.
>
> Can GIT help me determine on which date the vendor's tree was originally
> pulled?
>
> I thought of a script call GIT to diff the file against all revisions in
> the repo, possibly creating patch files, and then I could look at the
> number of changes for each as a measure of "closeness". Doing this for
> several files and finding commonality in the dates would increase the
> probability of finding the right one.
>
> If I copy the vendor source tree into the local GIT tree and commit a
> new branch are there any facilitites in GIT that would tell me which
> older revision, prior to a given date, is the best "match" on the files
> in the tree?
Nothing straight of the shelf, unfortunately.
> I just started using GIT and maybe the question is better for the GIT
> mailing list but I figured I'd ask it here first and see if anyone has
> already done something like this.
>
> In case anyone's wondering the device ships with a binary-only device
> driver module that will only work with a 2.4.18 kernel and that's why
> I'm stuck in the past on this.
The crude ad-hoc method would be to write a quick shell scripts that
creates a diff between every revision between linux-2.4.18..linux-2.4.19
but that would be slow. And it's a just too common problem (I last faced
it less than a week ago ...) so may deserve a better solution in git than
just an ad-hoc script, so I suggest you indeed take this to the git
mailing list.
Ralf
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