Re: Large Patch Series in Email (was Re: [PATCH 0000/0117] Staging: hv: Driver cleanup)

Florian Mickler
2011-07-17T10:47:50Z

On Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:07:39 +0100
Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

> > Do not send more than 15 patches at once to the vger
> > mailing lists!!!
> >
> > and, accordingly, I went to the trouble of setting up a GitHub
> > account to host a repo from which I could issue *one* single
> > PULL request email; I get a little miffed every time my
> > inbox gets blasted with hundreds of patches when others don't
> > do similarly.
>
> The problem with dumping stuff that needs review into a git tree is it's
> a lot of hassle to review so the advice is kind of outdated in such cases.
> It's good advice for things like big new subsystems perhaps but not for
> review.
>
> As is always the case social norms evolve faster than the people who feel
> compelled to attempt to document them.
>
> There are lots of web archives of the list and it's also not hard to set
> up mail tools to shuffle long emails into a folder so there are plenty of
> ways to manage and read the lists without being part of it.
>
> And someone should probably updating the CodingStyle document to reflect
> reality 8)
>
> Alan

And while at it, maybe add some tipps on how to keep patchseries
small... (people have probably more / better suggestions, please):

- 'submit early, submit often' instead of time based submittal (like...
oh I hacked 24/7 this week and now is friday, let's see how many
patches I got...)
- Putting controversial stuff at the end (so at least uncontroversial
stuff can be applied)
- try to split patchseries into stuff that can be applied independent
of one another.
- ...

Regards,
Flo