Re: [RFC/PATCH] log: add log.firstparent option

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jul 24, 2015, 08:17 UTC
Message-ID: <20150724081753.GA29451@peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CA+P7+xo11PwE+L3zCy8Nw=xt+ZWKadd_-ra7C-QvNV80B6dCGw@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 12:46:57AM -0700, Jacob Keller wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 12:40 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> > Whoops. Usually I "format-patch -s" and then add any notes while
> > sending. But the wifi at OSCON was so abysmal that instead I wrote the
> > notes directly into the commit message to send the whole thing later.
> > And of course format-patch is not smart enough to know that I meant
> > everything after the "---" as notes. :)
> 
> Kind of a side track but...
> 
> I think it's up to the caller of git-am to use "--scissors" to cut the
> log? But maybe we could add an option to git-format patch which
> formats and cuts via scissors as it generates the message? Not sure
> the best way to interpret this, but I know I've had trouble where I
> wrote some notes into an email and lost it because I killed the email
> for some other edit. Keeping them inside my local commits before
> sending out email would be handy.. hmmmm

The "---" is orthogonal to "--scissors". With "--scissors", the full format of the body is:

   some notes or cover letter

   -- >8 --
   the actual commit message

   ---
   more notes

   diff --git ...etc...

So here I was trying to use the "---" to add notes at the end (not because --scissors is not used consistently, but because I wanted the reader to see them after reading the commit message). So you could keep notes in the commit message by writing:

  my notes here

  -- >8 --
  the real commit message

and then "format-patch -s" just works, because it is munging the end. But if you want to be able to add commit notes at the end, you need format-patch to realize that any trailers should go before the "---" (i.e., to realize that the "---" is syntactically significant, and not just part of your message).

Another option would be to teach git-commit to split the "---" from the commit message itself, and put the bits after it into git-notes (and then format-patch already knows how to handle that). I had a patch series to do that long ago, but I found that I never used it (I usually _do_ type my notes in the mailer as I'm sending), so I never seriously pushed for inclusion. I might be able to dig it out of the archive if you're interested.

-Peff