Re: git am and the wrong chunk of ---

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Aug 10, 2012, 10:36 UTC
Message-ID: <20120810103612.GA21562@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <5024523F.3050208@zytor.com>

On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 05:13:51PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> I have some contributors who consistently put their commentary
> *before* the "---" line rather than *after* it, presumably with the
> notion that it is some kind of "cover text".  This messes with "git
> am", and so I end up having to edit those posts manually.
> 
> I have tried git am --scissors and it doesn't seem to solve the problem.
> 
> Is there any other option which can be used to automatically process
> such a patch?

If I understand your issue, somebody is writing:

    From: them
    To: you
    Date: ...
    Subject: [PATCH] subject line

    commit message body
    ....

    some cover letter material that should go below the "---"
    ---
      [diffstat + diff]

How do you know when the commit message body ends, and the cover letter begins? We already have two machine-readable formats for separating the two ("---" after the commit message, and "-- >8 --" scissors before). Is there some machine-readable hint? Is it always the paragraph before the "---"? Chopping that off unconditionally seems like a dangerous heuristic.

-Peff