Create the Next Generation of depot_tools. Eh.

depot_tools/README.git-cl.codereview

+The git-cl README describes the git-cl command set.  This document
+describes how code review and git work together in general, intended
+for people familiar with git but unfamiliar with the code review
+process supported by Rietveld.
+
+== Concepts and terms
+A Rietveld review is for discussion of a single change or patch.  You
+upload a proposed change, the reviewer comments on your change, and
+then you can upload a revised version of your change.  Rietveld stores
+the history of uploaded patches as well as the comments, and can
+compute diffs in between these patches.  The history of a patch is
+very much like a small branch in git, but since Rietveld is
+VCS-agnostic the concepts don't map perfectly.  The identifier for a
+single review+patches+comments in Rietveld is called an "issue".
+
+Rietveld provides a basic uploader that understands git.  This program
+is used by git-cl, and is included in the git-cl repo as upload.py.
+
+== Basic interaction with git
+The fundamental problem you encounter when you try to mix git and code
+review is that with git it's nice to commit code locally, while during
+a code review you're often requested to change something about your
+code.  There are a few different ways you can handle this workflow
+with git:
+
+1) Rewriting a single commit.  Say the origin commit is O, and you
+   commit your initial work in a commit A, making your history like
+   O--A.  After review comments, you commit --amend, effectively
+   erasing A and making a new commit A', so history is now O--A'.
+   (Equivalently, you can use git reset --soft or git rebase -i.)
+
+2) Writing follow-up commits.  Initial work is again in A, and after
+   review comments, you write a new commit B so your history looks
+   like O--A--B.  When you upload the revised patch, you upload the
+   diff of O..B, not A..B; you always upload the full diff of what
+   you're proposing to change.
+
+The Rietveld patch uploader just takes arguments to "git diff", so
+either of the above workflows work fine.  If all you want to do is
+upload a patch, you can use the upload.py provided by Rietveld with
+arguments like this:
+
+  upload.py --server server.com <args to "git diff">
+
+The first time you upload, it creates a new issue; for follow-ups on
+the same issue, you need to provide the issue number:
+
+  upload.py --server server.com --issue 1234 <args to "git diff">
+
+== git-cl to the rescue
+git-cl simplifies the above in the following ways:
+
+1) "git cl config" puts a persistent --server setting in your .git/config.
+
+2) The first time you upload an issue, the issue number is associated with
+   the current *branch*.  If you upload again, it will upload on the same
+   issue.  (Note that this association is tied to a branch, not a commit,
+   which means you need a separate branch per review.)
+
+3) If your branch is "tracking" (in the "git checkout --track" sense)
+   another one (like origin/master), calls to "git cl upload" will
+   diff against that branch by default.  (You can still pass arguments
+   to "git diff" on the command line, if necessary.)
+
+In the common case, this means that calling simply "git cl upload"
+will always upload the correct diff to the correct place.
+
+== Patch series
+The above is all you need to know for working on a single patch.
+
+Things get much more complicated when you have a series of commits
+that you want to get reviewed.  Say your history looks like
+O--A--B--C.  If you want to upload that as a single review, everything
+works just as above.
+
+But what if you upload each of A, B, and C as separate reviews?
+What if you then need to change A?
+
+1) One option is rewriting history: write a new commit A', then use
+   git rebase -i to insert that diff in as O--A--A'--B--C as well as
+   squash it.  This is sometimes not possible if B and C have touched
+   some lines affected by A'.
+ 
+2) Another option, and the one espoused by software like topgit, is for
+   you to have separate branches for A, B, and C, and after writing A'
+   you merge it into each of those branches.  (topgit automates this
+   merging process.)  This is also what is recommended by git-cl, which
+   likes having different branch identifiers to hang the issue number
+   off of.  Your history ends up looking like:
+
+       O---A---B---C
+            \   \   \
+             A'--B'--C'
+
+   Which is ugly, but it accurately tracks the real history of your work, can
+   be thrown away at the end by committing A+A' as a single "squash" commit.
+
+In practice, this comes up pretty rarely.  Suggestions for better workflows
+are welcome.