From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
To: Martin Fick <mfick@codeaurora.org>
Cc: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>,
Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>,
Git List <git@vger.kernel.org>,
repo-discuss@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: storing cover letter of a patch series?
Date: Sat, 06 Aug 2016 09:51:33 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <xmqqziopj0x6.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAPc5daV51cwPs-8uc_SYLaod7RB7aDGYbjt-x-JsY1qNL81QRA@mail.gmail.com> (Junio C. Hamano's message of "Fri, 5 Aug 2016 14:23:42 -0700")
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Martin Fick <mfick@codeaurora.org> wrote:
>> On Friday, August 05, 2016 08:39:58 AM you wrote:
>>> * A new topic, when you merge it to the "lit" branch, you
>>> describe the cover as the merge commit message.
>>>
>>> * When you updated an existing topic, you tell a tool
>>> like "rebase -i -p" to recreate "lit" branch on top of
>>> the mainline. This would give you an opportunity to
>>> update the cover.
>>
>> This is a neat idea. How would this work if there is no
>> merge commit (mainline hasn't moved)?
>
> Sorry, I do not understand your question. You always
> merge into your own "lit", which is based on (some)
> version of the mainline. If a topic builds on top of the
> mainline, you "merge --no-ff" it into "lit". Because no
> merges on "lit" will be part of the future mainline anyway,
> even the project frowns upon a "no-ff" merge, that will
> not be a problem.
In any case, the "if you want to say more than what the individual
commits say about the topic as a whole, say it in the merge that
brings them all into an integration branch" is not just "a neat
idea".
Recent versions of Git actively _encourages_ you to describe what it
is about by opening your editor when you create a merge, and the
cover letter material is something you would want the merge of your
topic into the upstream to say when your topic finally lands there.
And as the author of a topic, the person who writes the cover letter
is well qualified to describe what the topic as a whole is about,
how it relates to the state of the entire project before that merge
happens. That is what you want to write in the cover letter.
So "write it in a merge log message yourself, and somehow find a way
to propagate it to the maintainer's tree" is the natural consequence
of thinking and working backwards from what we want to have in the
final history; not any novel (or neat) idea.
What follows is that at the receiving end (i.e. "git am") it may be
suboptimal to create an empty commit to record the cover letter
material. Storing at the bottom of the received pile of commits is
out of question. It _might_ be acceptable to queue it as the tip,
and then teach "git merge $topic" to notice that $topic^0 is such a
"cover letter commit", and turn itself into "git merge $topic^1 &&
git commit --amend -C $topic", though.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-08-06 20:10 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 57+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-09-10 16:28 storing cover letter of a patch series? Jacob Keller
2015-09-10 17:41 ` Junio C Hamano
2015-09-10 18:02 ` Martin Fick
2015-09-10 18:38 ` Jacob Keller
2015-09-10 18:39 ` Junio C Hamano
2015-09-11 22:24 ` Junio C Hamano
2016-08-04 23:49 ` Michael S. Tsirkin
2016-08-05 15:39 ` Junio C Hamano
2016-08-05 21:20 ` Martin Fick
2016-08-05 21:23 ` Junio C Hamano
2016-08-06 16:51 ` Junio C Hamano [this message]
2016-08-07 5:12 ` Michael S. Tsirkin
2016-08-07 9:52 ` John Keeping
2016-08-07 10:42 ` Duy Nguyen
2016-08-08 17:42 ` Junio C Hamano
2016-08-09 7:12 ` Michael J Gruber
2015-09-10 18:32 ` Jacob Keller
2015-09-10 18:44 ` Junio C Hamano
2015-09-10 18:46 ` Jacob Keller
2015-09-10 20:09 ` Philip Oakley
2015-09-10 21:03 ` Jacob Keller
2016-08-04 23:43 ` Michael S. Tsirkin
2015-09-10 18:58 ` Johannes Schindelin
2015-09-10 21:00 ` Jacob Keller
2015-09-10 21:21 ` Johannes Schindelin
2015-09-10 22:20 ` Philip Oakley
2015-09-12 22:51 ` [PATCH] doc: show usage of branch description Philip Oakley
2015-09-12 23:44 ` Jacob Keller
2015-09-14 12:01 ` Philip Oakley
2015-09-14 13:24 ` Philip Oakley
2015-09-14 17:00 ` Junio C Hamano
2015-09-15 16:06 ` Philip Oakley
2015-09-15 19:10 ` Philip Oakley
2015-09-14 14:10 ` [PATCH v2] " Philip Oakley
2015-09-11 8:30 ` storing cover letter of a patch series? Chris Packham
2015-09-18 4:03 ` Simon Glass
2016-08-08 17:27 ` Stefan Beller
2016-08-08 20:09 ` Junio C Hamano
2016-08-13 8:49 ` Duy Nguyen
2016-08-14 7:15 ` Jacob Keller
2016-08-15 6:28 ` Stefan Beller
2016-08-15 6:38 ` Jacob Keller
2016-08-15 6:49 ` Stefan Beller
2016-08-15 6:52 ` Jacob Keller
2016-08-15 9:40 ` Duy Nguyen
2016-08-15 12:37 ` Philip Oakley
2016-08-15 13:30 ` Duy Nguyen
2016-08-15 13:47 ` John Keeping
2016-08-15 20:09 ` Jacob Keller
2016-08-15 20:38 ` Junio C Hamano
2016-08-15 23:01 ` Jacob Keller
2016-08-15 20:46 ` Philip Oakley
2016-08-16 3:45 ` Duy Nguyen
2016-08-16 5:26 ` Jacob Keller
2016-08-16 6:45 ` Duy Nguyen
2016-08-16 15:52 ` Jacob Keller
2016-08-16 21:29 ` Philip Oakley
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=xmqqziopj0x6.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com \
--to=gitster@pobox.com \
--cc=git@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=jacob.keller@gmail.com \
--cc=mfick@codeaurora.org \
--cc=mst@redhat.com \
--cc=repo-discuss@googlegroups.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.