From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Leo Liang Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2020 09:32:33 +0800 Subject: Cover Letter of Patchsets In-Reply-To: <20200706120346.4C9442439E0@gemini.denx.de> References: <20200706023510.GB2522@andestech.com> <20200706120346.4C9442439E0@gemini.denx.de> Message-ID: <20200707013233.GA26615@andestech.com> List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: u-boot@lists.denx.de Dear Wolfgang, On Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 08:03:46PM +0800, Wolfgang Denk wrote: > Dear Leo, > > In message <20200706023510.GB2522@andestech.com> you wrote: > > > > I am Leo, just recently joined the community. > > and been picking up the guide line of uboot's development. > > > > I am a bit curious about the policy on the cover letter of patchsets. > > Is cover letter mandatory ? > > No, it is not really mandatoryh, but strongl recommended for patch > series. > > > IMHO, making it mandatory, especially on patchsets that consist of > > more than 1 patch, is more than useful and of great advantages. > > For single patches a cover letter usually makes little sense. > > > 1. Making patches clearer for peer and maintainer review > ... > > 2. Helping the author better organize the patchset > ... > > In all, I think it would be nice to write cover letter to introduce the work. > > All your arguments make a lot of sense, indeed. > > > If I miss anything or misunderstand anything please let me know, thanks in advance. > > Please keep in mind that an inherent property of the cover letter is > that it is NOT part of the patches itself, i. e. it helps only > during the review process, but not any time later when someone tries > to understand the code from reading the git commit logs. > > > So the essential information to understand the purpose and the > implementation (and ideally also how it has been tested / can be > tested) should always be part of the commit messages itself. > > THe cover letter can summarize such information and provide the > overview information for a patch series. Also it should commet on > the changes between versions of the patch series, if these are > needed (especially when major rework is done between submissions). > > But it is only supplementary information which gets lost when the > patches are pulled into the git repository. > Understood! Thank you very much for the clarification. Best regards, Leo