Re: [PATCH v2] format-patch: fix From header in cover letter

From: D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 17, 2026, 13:21 UTC
Message-ID: <CALnO6CD6c36ur4cxqNAB=Jy=m6yxVfoSzAAekewQZr2vjjKn2w@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20260217063400.GA101988@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 1:34 AM Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

Show 21 quoted lines

>
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 07:22:08AM +0100, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
>
> > One thing that made me stop though is the folowing sentence in
> > git-format-patch(1):
> >
> >   Use ident in the From: header of each commit email.
> >
> > The option explicitly mentions that we use "--from" for the commit
> > emails, only, and that may be read as implying that it's not used for
> > the cover letter.
> >
> > I don't really know whether that wording is intentional, and I cannot
> > come up with a good reason why it should be. But I'd say that the
> > wording is something we should adjust.
>
> I think that wording comes from me back in 2013, and I just never gave
> any thought to cover-letter generation by format-patch itself. I never
> use it (and I probably forgot it even existed, given that most people
> would use send-email's cover letter generation, and I do my own thing
> with mutt).

Funny: the send-email manual's main mention of cover letters apart
from setting Cc/To fields is in an example…

           $ git format-patch --cover-letter -M origin/master -o outgoing/
           $ edit outgoing/0000-*
           $ git send-email outgoing/*

…using format-patch! (Which is how I generate cover letters, and probably part of why.)

-- 
D. Ben Knoble