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+Date:   Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:39:48 -0700 (PDT)
+From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
+To: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>
+cc: git@vger.kernel.org
+Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: git checkout -f branch doesn't remove extra files
+Abstract: In this article, Linus talks about building a tarball,
+ incremental patch, and ChangeLog, given a base release and two
+ rc releases, following the convention of giving the patch from
+ the base release and the latest rc, with ChangeLog between the
+ last rc and the latest rc.
+
+On Sat, 13 Aug 2005, Dave Jones wrote:
+>
+>  > Git actually has a _lot_ of nifty tools. I didn't realize that people
+>  > didn't know about such basic stuff as "git-tar-tree" and "git-ls-files".
+>
+> Maybe its because things are moving so fast :)  Or maybe I just wasn't
+> paying attention on that day. (I even read the git changes via RSS,
+> so I should have no excuse).
+
+Well, git-tar-tree has been there since late April - it's actually one of
+those really early commands. I'm pretty sure the RSS feed came later ;)
+
+I use it all the time in doing releases, it's a lot faster than creating a
+tar tree by reading the filesystem (even if you don't have to check things
+out). A hidden pearl.
+
+This is my crappy "release-script":
+
+        [torvalds@g5 ~]$ cat bin/release-script
+        #!/bin/sh
+        stable="$1"
+        last="$2"
+        new="$3"
+        echo "# git-tag v$new"
+        echo "git-tar-tree v$new linux-$new | gzip -9 > ../linux-$new.tar.gz"
+        echo "git-diff-tree -p v$stable v$new | gzip -9 > ../patch-$new.gz"
+        echo "git-rev-list --pretty v$new ^v$last > ../ChangeLog-$new"
+        echo "git-rev-list --pretty=short v$new ^v$last | git-shortlog > ../ShortLog"
+        echo "git-diff-tree -p v$last v$new | git-apply --stat > ../diffstat-$new"
+
+and when I want to do a new kernel release I literally first tag it, and
+then do
+
+        release-script 2.6.12 2.6.13-rc6 2.6.13-rc7
+
+and check that things look sane, and then just cut-and-paste the commands.
+
+Yeah, it's stupid.
+
+                Linus
+