Re: [PATCH v2] bugreport: use quoted line prefixes

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 15, 2025, 16:18 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq5xeosgm3.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <52a6177e706d8653251c61bc660f10b703ea6a9e.1755256099.git.code@khaugsbakk.name>

kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com writes:

> From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>
>
> Quoted line prefixes make it easier to distinguish between the questions
> and the answers, both for the reporter and for the readers.

This may improve things a bit, but the #1 thing that made the reports most hard to read for me, while reading bugreport output posted here over time, is lack of a blank line between each question and its answer (and the tail end of an answer and the beginning of the next question).

I wonder if there are things we can do to encourage reporters to leave blank lines around what they write?

Show 5 quoted lines

> -"Thank you for filling out a Git bug report!\n"
> -"Please answer the following questions to help us understand your issue.\n"
> +"> Thank you for filling out a Git bug report!\n"
> +"> Please answer the following questions to help us understand your issue.\n"
>  "\n"

I do not see a need to quote the above. Nobody will write in this space between the above introductory text and the first question below.

> -"What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue)\n"
> +"> What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue)\n"
>  "\n"

Here is one blank line between this question and the next question. If the reporter typed on that blank line, we end up with an uninterrupted sequence of questions and answers.

I wonder if it helps if we did:

 - Give more blank lines upfront, like three lines, making it

	> We ask you a question here...

	> We ask you another question here...

 - Give a stronger prompt to guide them where to write their answer.

	Q1. We ask you a question here...

A1.

	Q2. We ask you another question here...

I suspec that the latter might result in what we want, without annoying the repoter too much. We could also do

	> We ask you a question here ...

        (please write your answer here)

	> We ask you another question here ...

but that would make them remove that place-holding prompt, which would be annoying, and at the same time, tempt them to remove the blank lines around it. The fewer things we make them remove, the better chance we have to achieve what we want, I think.

Thanks.