Re: [PATCH v2] scripts/checkpatch.pl: check for placeholders in cover letter patches

["Philippe Mathieu-Daudé" <philmd@linaro.org>]

Hi Manos,

On 30/1/24 12:02, Manos Pitsidianakis wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 at 12:57, Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 at 10:51, Manos Pitsidianakis
>> <manos.pitsidianakis@linaro.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 at 12:42, Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 at 10:39, Manos Pitsidianakis
>>>> <manos.pitsidianakis@linaro.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 at 12:34, Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 at 10:11, Manos Pitsidianakis
>>>>>> <manos.pitsidianakis@linaro.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Check if a file argument is a cover letter patch produced by
>>>>>>> git-format-patch --cover-letter; It is initialized with subject suffix "
>>>>>>> *** SUBJECT HERE ***" and body prefix " *** BLURB HERE ***". If they
>>>>>>> exist, warn the user.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> FWIW, as far as I can see from my email archive, this particular
>>>>>> mistake has been made by contributors to qemu-devel perhaps
>>>>>> half a dozen times at most in the last decade...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> thanks
>>>>>> -- PMM
>>>>>
>>>>> Peter, searching for `b:"BLURB HERE"` in lore.kernel.org yields about
>>>>> 170 results including these patches.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/?q=b%3A%22BLURB+HERE%22

This comment is the default --blurb-template from git-publish:
https://github.com/stefanha/git-publish/blob/master/git-publish#L742
As the tool is also used to post patches to other projects, I'd
recommend fixing it there at the source.

Somewhere between the pre-publish-send-email and git_send_email()
calls you could check cover_letter_path doesn't contain the default
blurb.

>>>> Yes, there's a few more 'blurb here' results than 'subject here'
>>>> results, but they're almost always just where the submitter did
>>>> provide a proper blurb but then forgot to delete the 'BLURB HERE'
>>>> line, rather than where there's no blurb at all.
>>>
>>> Though you said half a dozen times at most.
>>
>> Yes, because I was counting 'subject here'.
>>
>> My question here is really "how much do we care about having
>> checkpatch point out this error?".
>>
>> thanks
>> -- PMM
> 
> I do, because it gives some peace of mind. But I do not care so much
> that I'd want to continue this conversation further.
>