Re: [PATCH 0/3] mingw: introduce a way to avoid std handle inheritance

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 31, 2017, 18:09 UTC
Message-ID: <20171031180933.styinoik4npmd53b@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1.1710311809570.6482@virtualbox>

Hi,

Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> On Mon, 30 Oct 2017, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

>> Can this rationale go in the commit messages?
>
> I thought I had done exactly that in 1/3...

Okay, I'll be more specific. This cover letter includes some information about the rationale and motivation for the series. That's great: it makes reading the patches easier. But TBH I'd rather that it hadn't included that information at all, since if it said "see patch 1/3 for rationale" then I could save the trouble of reading the same information twice.

And unfortunately much of the relevant information is not repeated there. The cover letter mentions:

- that Visual Studio is a motivating example
- that this is conceptually similar to Unix sockets
- that those do not need to be marked as inheritable, as the process
  can simply open the named pipe. No global flags. No problems.
- that this has already seem some testing in Git for Windows (i.e.
  analagous information to what a Tested-by footer would say)

It is also just more readable than patch 1/3's commit message. That's to be expected, since it was written later. My second draft of something is often clearer than the first draft.

Thanks and hope that helps, Jonathan