Re: [PATCH 1/2] SubmittingPatches: extend release-notes experiment to topic names

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>
Date: Oct 8, 2025, 21:58 UTC
Message-ID: <75d82bb5-f2ce-449b-8387-fc1d63ce4e78@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <aObVmU7m4PahMsEN@nand.local>

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, at 23:20, Taylor Blau wrote:

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>[snip]
> I wrote it this way to account for individuals listed under the
> Co-authored-by trailer. I'm not entirely sure that I'm following the
> latter half of this sentence. Could you clarify what you mean?
>

Sorry. I tried to say that: I don’t think “primary” makes it more clear that one should use the Git author compared to just “author”.

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>> But it was noted[1] that the-topic-summary doesn’t seem to have been
>> used much. That’s not surprising given that the instruction makes
>> the-topic-summary blend in with the rest of the cover letter and doesn’t
>> signal that the author intends for the first paragraph to be used as
>> such. This patch shares the same problem.
>
> That's fair, though I admittedly dislike the idea of prescribing a
> format for the cover letter. It should be clear to those (such as the
> maintainer) who are reading the cover letter closely whether or not the
> first paragraph (or two) are meant to be used as the topic name/summary.
>

I think saying that the cover letter should start with them is just as much of a prescription as saying that they should be marked with some paragraph-prefix (and be somewhere in the cover letter). Some people might prefer to start the letter with what they think are important call-out information and get to the topic summary later. For example.

>[snip]