Re: [kernel.org users] b4: encouraging using the cover letter in merge commits?

["Toke Høiland-Jørgensen" <toke@toke.dk>]

James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> writes:

> On Fri, 2020-12-18 at 22:32 +0100, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen via
> linux.kernel.org wrote:
>> Hi Konstantin
>> 
>> Jens, Arnaldo and I just had a twitter conversation[0] about cover
>> letters and merge commits. Do you think it would be possible to
>> support the 'include the cover letter text in the merge commit
>> message' work flow in b4, maybe even encourage it?
>> 
>> I notice b4 will already save the cover letter along with the patch
>> mbox file, but maybe it would be possible to automate the workflow
>> some more? A 'b4 merge' command that wraps 'git merge' and pre-
>> populates the commit message with the text from the cover letter? Or
>> some other trick?
>
> I think it's important to ask before we do this: why is the cover
> letter relevant to a merge but not to a linear patch application (which
> is what a lot of maintainers use b4 for)?  I think the answer is that
> it's relevant to linear patches as well, which is why we use the Link
> tag, but in that case shouldn't we be using the Link tag for merge
> commits also?
>
> We did toy with the idea of using empty commits for cover letters a
> while ago but they got dropped because of the problems they cause (and
> the fact that they get lost on a rebase), so it could be the answer to
> why merge but not linear is because we have a vehicle for the former
> but not the latter, but we should think about it first.

I agree that the cover letter is useful more often than not and ideally
it would be included in most cases. In netdev/bpf land the maintainers
do this by always creating a merge commit when applying a multi-part
series; here's Daniel applying one of mine, for instance:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next.git/commit/?id=4e083fdfa39db29bbc7725e229e701867d0da183

I personally think this practice is pretty nice, and so I was hoping
that supporting this workflow in b4 could be a way to encourage other
maintainers to take up the practice as well :)

-Toke