Re: git am and the wrong chunk of ---

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 05:13:51PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> I have some contributors who consistently put their commentary
> *before* the "---" line rather than *after* it, presumably with the
> notion that it is some kind of "cover text".  This messes with "git
> am", and so I end up having to edit those posts manually.
> 
> I have tried git am --scissors and it doesn't seem to solve the problem.
> 
> Is there any other option which can be used to automatically process
> such a patch?

If I understand your issue, somebody is writing:


    From: them
    To: you
    Date: ...
    Subject: [PATCH] subject line

    commit message body
    ....

    some cover letter material that should go below the "---"
    ---
      [diffstat + diff]


How do you know when the commit message body ends, and the cover letter
begins? We already have two machine-readable formats for separating the
two ("---" after the commit message, and "-- >8 --" scissors before). Is
there some machine-readable hint? Is it always the paragraph before the
"---"? Chopping that off unconditionally seems like a dangerous
heuristic.

-Peff