[llvm-dev] git strategy for handling the llvm-project repo together with ours

[Kai Plociennik via llvm-dev]

Dear all,

we are integrating support in Clang + LLVM for a target architecture (an 
accelerator device) we are developing. Currently, we have a git 
repository, which contains LLVM 9 together with the added/changed files 
from us.

Now, we want to have a sustainable strategy for handling the 
llvm-project repository together with our changes. To summarize, we want 
to migrate to LLVM 12, start with 12.0.0, add our target architecture 
support based on this version, continue development of our target, and 
from time to time get the latest changes from the official llvm-project 
repo so we keep up to date over time.

Hence, we somehow have to "merge" the llvm-project and our repository, 
and keep history of both. As far as I know, there are several ways we 
could do this, e.g. using submodules or subtree merge.

In the future, if support for our target architecture is mature, and the 
hardware is publicly available, for us it would be interesting to have 
our target support in the official llvm-project repository, in which 
case our additions potentially would have to go into the official repo.

My question is: Is there an intended way of how we should handle this 
with git?

Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Kai Plociennik

-- 
Dr. Kai Plociennik
Fraunhofer-Institut für Techno- und Wirtschaftsmathematik ITWM
Competence Center High Performance Computing
Fraunhofer-Platz 1
67663 Kaiserslautern
Tel: +49 (0)631 31600 4081
mail: kai.plociennik at itwm.fraunhofer.de
www.itwm.fraunhofer.de