From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail.toke.dk (mail.toke.dk [45.145.95.4]) by mx.groups.io with SMTP id smtpd.web11.8096.1608381294583700303 for ; Sat, 19 Dec 2020 04:34:55 -0800 Authentication-Results: mx.groups.io; dkim=pass header.i=@toke.dk header.s=20161023 header.b=SdGbGOVD; spf=pass (domain: toke.dk, ip: 45.145.95.4, mailfrom: toke@toke.dk) From: =?UTF-8?B?VG9rZSBIw7hpbGFuZC1Kw7hyZ2Vuc2Vu?= DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=toke.dk; s=20161023; t=1608381292; bh=oBhMHDqKvyxFWG/L8wAQLU2RopReIScmHXFW4RqV67c=; h=From:To:Cc:Subject:In-Reply-To:References:Date:From; b=SdGbGOVD0JlIzb97f0R5/fUUdUtqZ0yDaUohzbT1JxBXPUOxYYxwg/avw7n0kBr7T Z/7Of4Gdgidvx116euh3rXtMeq2DDOVzwuoCYShs857Df+iiiH+PmjYONm8RijxtFZ i+HJZWEdSJJdD6E8I7HXIU4ez723nK+9h+LT8km9FQTO90Ciy+cBohb47/jrT2cXCi h7wOHxbz1cVYC7+HU/0T+PfZ7BZ8t2w1+RyVayz4Nu//xz52aQRtI8r1Qj+zUpPkSe hHUZz0NiL79xKrOs93l2+mUC60EJKglOHmZJag+Bx+XxPIONI0aQWsnJeqTBpTF4TU gSfwVENiJs6Hw== To: James Bottomley , Konstantin Ryabitsev Cc: users@linux.kernel.org, tools@linux.kernel.org, Jens Axboe , Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo Subject: Re: [kernel.org users] b4: encouraging using the cover letter in merge commits? In-Reply-To: References: <877dpeol5w.fsf@toke.dk> Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2020 13:34:51 +0100 X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett Message-ID: <87y2hum0t0.fsf@toke.dk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable James Bottomley writes: > On Fri, 2020-12-18 at 22:32 +0100, Toke H=C3=B8iland-J=C3=B8rgensen via > linux.kernel.org wrote: >> Hi Konstantin >>=20 >> 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? >>=20 >> 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=3D4e083fdfa39db29bbc7725e229e701867d0da183 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