Re-submitting patches

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: May 5, 2010, 21:24 UTC
Message-ID: <20100505212437.GA26487@progeny.tock>
In-Reply-To: <19425.56411.745112.753594@winooski.ccs.neu.edu>

Hi Eli,

Eli Barzilay wrote:

> On May  5, Eli Barzilay wrote:

>> (*sigh*)  That's correct, I fixed this, but improperly remade the
>> patch.
>
> Is there some convention for sending a fixed patch?

With a small patch like this one, you can just send the fixed patch as a reply to the thread. Putting “[PATCH v2]” in the subject would make it clear that this is the newer and better version.

With larger patches, doing that too often can overload people. My preferred solution: describe the changes as soon as you want, but then take some time to polish them before resubmitting. This gives people time to breathe. ;-)

The “ideal patch flow” section in Documentation/SubmittingPatches says:

-------
 (3) Polish, refine, and re-send to the list and the people who
     spend their time to improve your patch.  Go back to step (2).
-------

Maybe this could be clearer. In particular, sometimes it is not obvious to people that even the patch submitter can pretend to be a reviewer and discuss small incremental changes.

Thanks for bringing it up, Jonathan