Syncing changes between Clippy and rust-lang/rust - Clippy Documentation

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# Syncing changes between Clippy and `rust-lang/rust`

Clippy currently gets built with a pinned nightly version.

In the `rust-lang/rust` repository, where rustc resides, there’s a copy of Clippy that compiler hackers modify from time to time to adapt to changes in the unstable API of the compiler.

We need to sync these changes back to this repository periodically, and the changes made to this repository in the meantime also need to be synced to the `rust-lang/rust` repository.

To avoid flooding the `rust-lang/rust` PR queue, this two-way sync process is done in a bi-weekly basis if there’s no urgent changes. This is done starting on the day of the Rust stable release and then every other week. That way we guarantee that we keep this repo up to date with the latest compiler API, and every feature in Clippy is available for 2 weeks in nightly, before it can get to beta. For reference, the first sync following this cadence was performed the 2020-08-27.

This process is described in detail in the following sections. For general information about `subtree`s in the Rust repository see the rustc-dev-guide.

## Patching git-subtree to work with big repos

Currently, there’s a bug in `git-subtree` that prevents it from working properly with the `rust-lang/rust` repo. There’s an open PR to fix that, but it’s stale. Before continuing with the following steps, we need to manually apply that fix to our local copy of `git-subtree`.

You can get the patched version of `git-subtree` from here. Put this file under `/usr/lib/git-core` (making a backup of the previous file) and make sure it has the proper permissions:

    sudo cp --backup /path/to/patched/git-subtree.sh /usr/lib/git-core/git-subtree
    sudo chmod --reference=/usr/lib/git-core/git-subtree~ /usr/lib/git-core/git-subtree
    sudo chown --reference=/usr/lib/git-core/git-subtree~ /usr/lib/git-core/git-subtree

> Note: The first time running `git subtree push` a cache has to be built. This involves going through the complete Clippy history once. For this you have to increase the stack limit though, which you can do with `ulimit -s 60000`. Make sure to run the `ulimit` command from the same session you call git subtree.

> Note: If you are a Debian user, `dash` is the shell used by default for scripts instead of `sh`. This shell has a hardcoded recursion limit set to 1,000. In order to make this process work, you need to force the script to run `bash` instead. You can do this by editing the first line of the `git-subtree` script and changing `sh` to `bash`.

> Note: The following sections assume that you have set up remotes following the instructions in defining remotes.

## Performing the sync from `rust-lang/rust` to Clippy

Here is a TL;DR version of the sync process (all the following commands have to be run inside the `rust` directory):

1. Clone the `rust-lang/rust` repository or make sure it is up-to-date.

2. Checkout the commit from the latest available nightly. You can get it using `rustup check`.

3. Sync the changes to the rust-copy of Clippy to your Clippy fork:

       # Be sure to either use a net-new branch, e.g. `rustup`, or delete the branch beforehand
       # because changes cannot be fast forwarded and you have to run this command again.
       git subtree push -P src/tools/clippy clippy-local rustup

   > Note: Most of the time you have to create a merge commit in the `rust-clippy` repo (this has to be done in the Clippy repo, not in the rust-copy of Clippy):

       git fetch upstream  # assuming upstream is the rust-lang/rust remote
       git switch rustup
       git merge upstream/main --no-ff

   > Note: This is one of the few instances where a merge commit is allowed in a PR.

4. Bump the nightly version in the Clippy repository by running these commands:

       cargo dev sync update_nightly
       git commit -m "Bump nightly version -> YYYY-MM-DD" rust-toolchain.toml clippy_utils/README.md

5. Open a PR to `rust-lang/rust-clippy` and wait for it to get merged (to accelerate the process ping the `@rust-lang/clippy` team in your PR and/or ask them in the Zulip stream.)

## Performing the sync from Clippy to `rust-lang/rust`

All the following commands have to be run inside the `rust` directory.

1. Make sure you have checked out the latest `main` of `rust-lang/rust`.
2. Sync the `rust-lang/rust-clippy` master to the rust-copy of Clippy:

       git switch -c clippy-subtree-update
       git subtree pull -P src/tools/clippy clippy-upstream master

3. Open a PR to `rust-lang/rust`