Re: [PATCH 0/6] Bring "format-patch --notes" closer to a real feature

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 18, 2012, 17:04 UTC
Message-ID: <7v391bn244.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8Dxx6JtRXP_HWNBrobNems+4UsaOGSRef08cf8--b5dOw@mail.gmail.com>

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> This replaces the earlier "wip" with a real thing.
>>
>> We never advertised the "--notes" option to format-patch (or
>> anything related to the pretty format options for that matter)
>> because the behaviour of these options was whatever they happened to
>> do, not what they were designed to do.
>
> Stupid question: does "git am" recreate notes from "format-patch
> --notes" output? If it does not, should it? I think it could be a nice
> way of copying notes from one machine to another, but not enabled by
> default (iow "am --notes").

Thinking about what the "notes" are, I do not think it should, at least by default; the model is broken at the conceptual level.

The notes are comments on a commit you make after the fact, because you do not want to (or cannot afford to) amend the commit to include the comment. When you are sending it out over e-mailto be applied with "am", as opposed to asking the other to pull, you are by definition willing to see the commit replayed with modification.

I think it is sensible for format-patch/am pipeline when asked to use --notes to add the notes section after "---" as additional material to help the recipient understand the context of the patch better, which is done with this series. If the submitter (or the recipient) wants to incorporate the description from the notes to update the proposed log message, it can easily be done by editing the output of "format-patch --notes" before sending it out (or before applying it with "am").

That does not mean that the recipient should not use notes for his own purpose on the resulting commit, by the way. It would be a convenient feature to prime the contents of such a new note the recipient creates on the resulting commit from the comment after "---" before the diffstat or "diff --git" line. Note that (no pun intended) that additional comment does not have to originate from any notes in the submitter's repository. If saving the additional comments the submitter attached from the notes to the patch is useful, it would equally be useful to save typed-in comments on the patch that came from the submitter's fingers, not from the notes.

It is something you can do by inspecting $dotest/patch file in your post-applypatch hook with today's git. If many people use and find such a feature desirable, we could add inbuilt support for it, but I do not think we are there yet.