Re: [PATCH 2/6] SubmittingPatches: discuss non-ident trailers

["Kristoffer Haugsbakk" <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2026, at 13:35, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2026 at 12:22:45AM +0200,
> kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com wrote:
>> diff --git a/Documentation/SubmittingPatches b/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
>> index 0b12badf86d..51c308a89a8 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
>> +++ b/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
>> @@ -474,7 +474,10 @@ These are the common trailers in use:
>>
>>  While you can also create your own trailer if the situation warrants it, we
>>  encourage you to instead use one of the common trailers in this project
>> -highlighted above.
>> +highlighted above. A trailer that credits someone might be more likely
>> +to be accepted since these are the most common ones. But another kind of
>> +trailer might be relevant, for example to link to an issue tracker
>> +belonging to a downstream project that is affected by a bug in Git.
>
> Hm, I wonder whether this is a bit too vague to really be helpful for a
> newcomer. Instead of alluding to such trailers, wouldn't it be
> preferable if we added those as actual examples to the list of known
> trailers and then tell folks that they can invent their own ones if
> there is a good reason to do so?

Honestly there are so few non-ident trailers that I don’t think they can
be listed as common trailers:

1. The Git project doesn’t need them (e.g. no bug tracker)
2. They seem mostly for use by other projects (bug trackers again)

With this list:

    git log --format='%(trailers:only,keyonly)' | sort | uniq

If you filter out the ident-looking ones:

    grep -v --extended-regexp -- '-[Bb]y$'

There are few left. And some can be discarded:

• Change-Id
• Message-ID
• Fixes (pointing to a commit)

So to address your point:

1. Maybe this is so niche that it is not worth mentioning; or
2. Maybe give a concrete example like `Closes: <bug link>`?