Re: config for `format-patch --notes`?

From: Johan Herland <johan@herland.net>
Date: Dec 22, 2016, 00:00 UTC
Message-ID: <CALKQrgekuu4d5EFLpT=sH+qCJSJdb9O0Zttw348UXffGDuwFzQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAM+g_NtsSaiZdy2Pq0gR9AaO6xiNnGSUbj5yd-uW3S80roEGCg@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 1:18 AM, Norbert Kiesel <nkiesel@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Hi,
>
> I use `git format-patch master..myBranch` quite a bit to send patches
> to other developers.  I also add notes to the commits
> so that I e.g. remember which patches were emailed to whom.  `git log`
> has an option to automatically include the notes in
> the output.  However, I can't find such an option for `git
> format-patch`.  Am I missing something?

I assume you mean _config_ option here (format-patch has had a --notes command-line option since v1.8.1). AFAICS, there's no config option that corresponds to the format-patch --notes command-line option.

You can easily alias or script your way around this, e.g.:

  git config alias.fp 'format-patch --notes'

This creates a 'git fp' command that does what you want, I believe.

Alternatively, if you need more control/automation of the resulting patches, you can write a script to edit the output files from format-patch. Currently, I don't believe there is any format-patch hook available to automatically trigger such a script, but, again, that can be achieved with an alias.

If you believe a config option would be a useful addition for more users than yourself, I am sure the community welcomes patches adding a format.notes config option.

> Another nice option would to to somehow include the branch name in the
> resulting output.  Right now I use either notes
> or abuse the `--subject` option for this.

From git-config(1):

    branch.<name>.description
        Branch description, can be edited with git branch
        --edit-description. Branch description is automatically added
        in the format-patch cover letter or request-pull summary.

...Johan

-- 
Johan Herland, <johan@herland.net>
www.herland.net