Re: How to create the " [PATCH 0/5]" first email?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 17, 2012, 23:49 UTC
Message-ID: <7vfw6gqkfg.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <98180D4AA94C468887029389CC535D4F@PhilipOakley>

"Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@iee.org> writes:

> I then applied it (using git am) to a temp branch to see what it
> produced, and could repeat the cycle until the patches looked right.

That's another obvious and valid way to prepare your series. It all depends on how comfortable you are to directly edit patches. Some people fear it. Some don't. Some can do it with their eyes closed ;-).

> However, when it came to creating the series, with comments, I
> couldn't see a way of having my comments within my local commits, but
> preparing a patch series that would properly include the '---'
> separator.

An unofficial trick that works is to write the

---

     * This is an additional comment

yourself when running "git commit". That will be propagated to the output from format-patch. You will have another "---" in front of the diffstat, but nobody is hurt by that.

But when doing a big series that deserves a cover letter [PATCH 0/n], you will use editor on the output from format-patch anyway, and I find it simpler to do the follow-on comments at that point myself.

Personal preferences vary, so whatever makes you feel comfortable with and works well for you is good.