Re: [PATCH v4] send-email: make it easy to discern the messages for each patch

From: Dragan Simic <dsimic@manjaro.org>
Date: Apr 6, 2024, 08:56 UTC
Message-ID: <e90f6c80be33b2b54e20992f19e417dc@manjaro.org>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqwmpbm4lp.fsf@gitster.g>

On 2024-04-06 07:40, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 37 quoted lines

> Dragan Simic <dsimic@manjaro.org> writes:
> 
>> Following the approach of making the produced output more readable, 
>> also
>> emit additional vertical whitespace after the "Send this email 
>> [y/n/...]?"
>> prompt.
> 
> Hmph.  I'd prefer to see you try not to endlessly extend the scope
> of a topic.
> 
> By including the above change, the patch no longer is small and
> focused enough, which was the reason why we said that the "let's
> move the final newline out of the translatable string" can be done
> as a "while at it" change.
> 
> Besides, because of the switch to separator semantics, that hunk
> lost the reason to exist as part of the "use a blank line between
> output for each message"---the change no longer is needed to support
> the feature.
> 
> Even though it is a good change to have, and it deserves to be
> justified by its merit alone.
> 
> The whole thing deserves to be a three-patch series, the first one
> being a preliminarly "let's move the final newline out of the
> translatable string" step, followed by "let's have a gap between
> output for each patch sent out".  Perhaps another "even during
> sending a single patch, we may want extra blank lines when use of
> editor and other user interation is involved" patch on top.
> 
> I haven't formed an opinion on that last step, and I do not think I
> can spend any time to think about that new part of the feature for
> some time (others can review that part and give their opinion on it,
> of course, while I'll be working on other topics).  It would mean
> you are adding yet another feature to delay the base improvement to
> stabilize.  You really do not want to do that.

Quite frankly, I think all these changes are small enough and understandable enough to be fine for being squashed into a single patch. See, I love perfection and I'm also kind of a perfectionist, but such an approach can sometimes actually become counterproductive. That's what I usually refer to as being pragmatic, in the sense of making things a bit less perfect but still fine, in the interest of "getting things done", so to speak. I hope it makes sense.

However, if you insist I'm also perfectly fine with splitting this patch into a three-patch series. That would make it perfect, there's no doubt about it, but would it be a pragmatic approach, worth the additional time and effort? Perhaps not.

> In any case, this [v4], as a single ball of wax, is not something I
> can confidently say "I reviewed this and looks OK".