Red Bear OS Patch Governance

Purpose

This document prevents loss of implemented work. It establishes rules that AI agents and human contributors must follow when modifying patches, recipes, or build configs.

Incident: 2026-04-26 Driver Code Loss

A previous agent session removed 8 patches and 9 BINS entries from recipes/core/base/recipe.toml to make the build succeed, instead of fixing patch conflicts. This deleted GPIO/I2C/UCSI driver source code that took a full day to implement (commits dc3f1f996, 3054adc5d).

The code was recovered from git history, but this must never happen again.

Rules

1. Never remove patches to fix build failures

When a patch fails to apply:

Rebase the patch against the current cumulative state
Fix the context lines so the hunk applies cleanly
Split the patch if only some hunks fail (keep the working hunks)
Document the failure reason in the patch file header

Do NOT remove the patch from the recipe.toml patches list without explicit user approval. If a patch must be temporarily disabled, comment it with a TODO explaining why and what needs to be fixed.

2. Never remove BINS entries to fix build failures

When a driver binary fails to compile:

Fix the compilation error in the driver source
Add the driver to EXISTING_BINS filter if source is incomplete
Document the failure

Do NOT remove the driver from the BINS array without explicit user approval.

3. Patch ordering matters

Patches in recipes/core/base/recipe.toml must be applied in the listed order. Some patches have interdependencies:

P2-acpi-i2c-resources.patch must apply before P2-daemon-hardening.patch (workspace entries reference source files created by the former)
P2-boot-runtime-fixes.patch modifies hwd/acpi.rs (must apply cleanly to upstream)
P2-init-acpid-wiring.patch adds 41_acpid.service and pcid-spawner retry logic (acpid spawn removal is in P2-boot-runtime-fixes, do NOT duplicate)

When reordering patches, test the FULL chain: remove source, rebuild, verify.

4. Recipe.toml is tracked, source trees are not

recipes/core/base/recipe.toml is git-tracked. Changes to it are durable. recipes/core/base/source/ is a fetched working copy — destroyed by make clean, make distclean, source refresh, and sync-upstream.

Any change to source/ MUST be preserved as a patch in local/patches/base/.

5. Before removing anything, check git history

git log --oneline --all -- <file>

If a previous commit added substantial work (driver implementations, features), the removal MUST be approved by the user. Agent sessions MUST NOT delete implemented work to bypass build failures.

6. Build validation after patch changes

After ANY change to the patches list or patch files:

Remove the source tree: rm -rf recipes/core/base/source
Full rebuild: REDBEAR_ALLOW_PROTECTED_FETCH=1 CI=1 make r.base
Verify NO "FAILED" or "rejects" in output
Verify all expected binaries in stage: ls stage/usr/bin/ stage/usr/lib/drivers/
Full image build: CI=1 make all CONFIG_NAME=redbear-full

Known Issues

Patch	Status	Notes
P2-acpid-core-refactor.patch	Needs rebasing	13/15 hunks fail on acpid/scheme.rs; removed from recipe.toml with TODO
P2-acpi-i2c-resources.patch	Stripped	Removed stale acpid hunks that duplicated P2-boot-runtime-fixes; driver source hunks intact
P2-boot-runtime-fixes.patch	Needs rebasing	Context lines from monolith split are stale; hwd/acpi.rs hunk fails on clean upstream
P2-init-acpid-wiring.patch	Deduplicated	Removed acpi.rs hunk that duplicated P2-boot-runtime-fixes

Recipe.toml Fix Log

Date	Change	Why
2026-04-26	Restored 8 removed patches	Agent deleted them to bypass conflicts; restored all from git HEAD
2026-04-26	Restored 9 BINS entries	Agent deleted i2cd, gpiod, ucsid, etc. to bypass missing sources
2026-04-26	Added EXISTING_BINS grep loop	Gracefully handles missing driver source instead of build failure
2026-04-26	Fixed grep/find variables	`${GREP}` and `${FIND}` are unset in redoxer env; use bare `grep`/`find`
2026-04-26	Fixed TOML escaping	`\"` in TOML triple-quotes becomes `"` in bash; use `\\\"` for literal `"`

4.3 KiB Raw Blame History