[llvm-dev] Proposing a llvm-patch helper script in-tree to create/apply patches without arc

[Florian Hahn via llvm-dev]

> On Jan 20, 2020, at 22:44, Martin Storsjö <martin at martin.st> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 21 Jan 2020, David Tellenbach via llvm-dev wrote:
> 
>> The downsides of providing a custom script are obvious: Someone has to write it and someone has to maintain it. Moreover I don't think that arcanist is so complicated that a custom script would be a huge improvement (you'd have to read the documentation of the new tool anyway).
> 
> To me, one upside would be if it simply would do less; if I want to apply a patch using arcanist, it will automatically change branches to apply the patch on the right base revision (or maybe just fetch the very latest master and apply it on top of that). As the llvm-project repo is fairly large, rebuilds are costly, and updating the git tree to a new version is something I want to schedule myself, not have a tool do for me behind my back when I want to try out a patch (that most probably would work just fine on my couple-days-old tree).
> 
> I would much prefer a tool that simply tries to apply the change on the current branch that I happen to have checked out at the moment - essentially "git am". I've tried to look for arcanist flags to achieve this, but didn't find any when I looked.
> 
> So a simple standalone tool (without the php dependency) that does less automatic stuff and just downloads and applies the patch would be great to me. Bonus points if it would set the git author field properly based on the patch author's phabricator user name/mail address.


This should be exactly what the current script in the linked patch does: download, apply and commit the latest diff for a review to the current branch, ignoring the base revision. Setting the author based on the review should be trivial to add as well.

Cheers,
Florian