Re: How mantainers check Git diffs and patches?

From: Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>
Date: Oct 1, 2025, 13:37 UTC
Message-ID: <20251001-pastoral-frisky-seahorse-cd5bdf@lemur>
In-Reply-To: <aNygY8Cm7LEaBzV6@localhost>

On Wed, Oct 01, 2025 at 12:30:43AM -0300, Henrique Soares wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> This is a simple question I have related to the PR diff review process.
> 
> How Git maintainers use to check diffs and review the code? I mean,
> sometimes I see that there are some large PATCHES that is hard or
> probably impossible to review only using e-mail client.
> 
> Do you use some syntax highlight in client e-mail; any pipeline that
> automatically download e-mails and apply to a local branch; or for each
> PR you save the e-mail file then "git apply" to review / test the diff?

There are tools that make it easy to apply a patch series to your local tree. For example, here's a random patch series from the list:

    https://lore.kernel.org/git/20250919010911.649831-1-sandals@crustytoothpaste.net

This will apply it on top of the current HEAD:

    b4 shazam https://lore.kernel.org/git/20250919010911.649831-1-sandals@crustytoothpaste.net

This will fetch it into FETCH_HEAD, making it behave pretty identical to a pull request:

    b4 shazam -H https://lore.kernel.org/git/20250919010911.649831-1-sandals@crustytoothpaste.net

From here, you can check out FETCH_HEAD to run tests or do a commit-by-commit review.

Hope this helps, -K