Re: [PATCH 2/3] MyFirstContribution: also explain cover letter in GitGitGadget section

From: Victoria Dye <vdye@github.com>
Date: Apr 27, 2022, 20:43 UTC
Message-ID: <ed4a0e46-a45c-0b05-fc35-f82e377ea231@github.com>
In-Reply-To: <afb80b8e9ee022cba9373f2191ee1619e5897b09.1651086288.git.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>

Philippe Blain via GitGitGadget wrote:

Show 34 quoted lines

> From: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
> 
> The "Sending Patches via GitGitGadget" section mentions that the PR
> title and description will be used as the cover letter, but does not
> explain what is a cover letter or what should be included in it.
> 
> Mention the purpose of the cover letter in that section, and give
> examples for the title and description, leveraging the excerpt extracted
> from the "Sending Patches with git send-email" section in the previous
> commit.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
> ---
>  Documentation/MyFirstContribution.txt | 16 ++++++++++++++--
>  1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/MyFirstContribution.txt b/Documentation/MyFirstContribution.txt
> index 681bbefe9cd..96da32f7cef 100644
> --- a/Documentation/MyFirstContribution.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/MyFirstContribution.txt
> @@ -808,8 +808,20 @@ https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git and open a PR either with the "New pull
>  request" button or the convenient "Compare & pull request" button that may
>  appear with the name of your newly pushed branch.
>  
> -Review the PR's title and description, as it's used by GitGitGadget as the cover
> -letter for your change. When you're happy, submit your pull request.
> +Review the PR's title and description, as they're used by GitGitGadget as the
> +cover letter for your change. The cover letter describes your proposed
> +contribution as a whole and is ideal to mention any context that might be
> +useful for reviewers. The title of your PR should be something which
> +succinctly covers the purpose of your entire topic branch, for example:
> +
> +----
> +Adding the 'psuh' command

Typically I see patch series titles follow the same "imperative mood" as commit titles/messages (see 'Documentation/SubmittingPatches.txt'). I'm not sure whether that's a rule written down somewhere or just convention, but for the sake of consistency you might want to do something like:

	"Add the 'psuh' command"

> +----
> +
> +Your PR's description will used as the body of the cover letter.

Including the line "Your PR's description..." is somewhat confusing to me as a first-time reader, since I was interpreting this section to be the *verbatim* text of the pull request title & description. If this *is* meant to be that description, then the note about the PR description can be removed. That point is also mentioned above, so it's probably not needed here anyway.

Show 6 quoted lines

> +include::MyFirstContribution-coverletter.txt[]
> +
> +When you're happy, submit your pull request.
>  
>  [[run-ci-ggg]]
>  === Running CI and Getting Ready to Send