Merging stable-2.0 into master

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

Hello all,

I've started the process of merging stable-2.0 into master.  It's an
unusually large merge (50 commits, since July 28), and I found 'git
merge' too overwhelming to deal with in one piece, so for now I've been
applying one commit at a time, adapting them as needed with frequent
runs of 'make check'.  So far I've worked through 31 out of 50.

My question is: after I've finished adapting and applying all of the
commits, is it okay to simply push them to master?  Or is it worthwhile
to instead do the following?

 1. Save a copy of the files that changed from adapting and applying
    all of the commits from stable-2.0.
 2. git reset --hard origin/master
 3. git merge origin/stable-2.0
    (making sure that nothing new has been pushed to stable-2.0)
 4. Compare the auto-merged files with the copies from step 1.
 5. Use the copies from step 1 to resolve merge conflicts.
 6. Commit the merge

I guess it's a question of how we want the commit history to look,
and how it will affect future merges.

What do you think?

      Mark