Re: storing cover letter of a patch series?

From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: Aug 15, 2016, 06:49 UTC
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kZG2H8P13ivDJWYM7snmw3EqrGr=FaaHkXJotzhRfa00A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CA+P7+xpgzRGiNtWrzjebP4EJr1kCed4w5JX412FhSHoZZrkNRA@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 11:38 PM, Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> wrote:

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> On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 11:28 PM, Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> wrote:
>> I would imagine this is similar to the pull requests on the linux
>> mailing list, i.e.
>> how it is with merges. Back in the time we did not open the editor for you to
>> talk about the merge you just did, and then we started doing that.
>>
>> So what to do when the description already exists?
>>
>> We could amend the description separated by a
>>
>>      # comment, below was added:
>>
>> line or such and then open the editor asked for user input.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Stefan
>>
>
> This is why my gut feeling is that we should instead have a separate
> way to store a cover letter, as it doesn't necessarily have to apply
> to a branch

Well in our workflow each series has at least one merge commit. (You *could* have different descriptions for the different branches, e.g. for maint: "fixes a segfault so let's get this in, but it needs to be redone properly" and for pu: "TODO: revert this partially when branch $proper-fix is merged")

> or a merge commit, but could just be annotation against a
> series of commits (maybe stored as base + tip, since most series would
> be linear in nature?)

We could suggest to use a merge always strategy for this, i.e. as soon as you send a cover-letter, we'll make a merge for you whose parents are the old HEAD and the new series?

If the user strictly wants to have a linear history, then we could try some empty commit magic before or after the series, but I doubt this is proper.

If users insist on linear history, they deny the benefits of a DAG that represents how the source code evolved. (Also see the eternal rebase vs merge discussion ;)

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>
> However, opening an editor and amending seems quite reasonable to me
> if we're just editing branch description, and then storing that as
> part of merge commit would be reasonable?
>
> I really think we want some alternative way to store it for other use
> cases besides the description, though.

"besides the description"?

What do you mean by that?

Thanks, Stefan

>
> Regards,
> Jake