Re: [PATCH v2] format-patch: Add --rfc for the common case of [RFC PATCH]

From: Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 19, 2016, 23:44 UTC
Message-ID: <CA+P7+xoGNEYbMKom5yqVDfMcyb1nJyP5nrQoRbWjGkPffyM+AQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20160919233434.fhkikksi4cxzrzb5@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

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>   - there are a non-trivial number of patches for other projects (JGIT,
>     EGIT, StGit, etc). This is somewhat unique to git, where we discuss
>     a lot of related projects on the list. But I wonder if other
>     projects would use subsystems in a similar way (though I guess for
>     the kernel, there are separate subsystems lists, so the "to" or "cc"
>     header becomes the more interesting tag).

Working in the net-next community, we often use "[net PATCH]", "[net-next] [PATCH]", or even just replace "PATCH" with "[net-next]" and similar (though this is served just fine by --subject-prefix, and may be an artifact caused because -P doesn't exist).

For the netdev, there are both "net" and "net-next" trees, and so there is some need to distinguish between these. I prefer "[net PATCH]" style myself.

I think --rfc is common enough to warrant its own tag, even if we add "-P tag" just because it encourages its use for whenever you want to comment about a patch without necessarily wanting it immediately applied.

I also happen to prefer "RFC PATCH" instead of "PATCH/RFC" but I think that's mostly preference.

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>
> So I dunno what all this means. I do think "--rfc" to standardize on
> _some_ form of "RFC PATCH" or "PATCH/RFC" would serve the most people,
> and would make things more consistent. But at least in Git, people would
> be served by having arbitrary prefixes, too.
>

A general way to do this would be helpful, but i don't think it avoids the usefulness of --rfc on its own.

I know that some formats are also generated by tools such as stgit which has its own way to generate emails and doesn't use exactly the same format as git.

Thanks, Jake