From: Junio C Hamano Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2026 05:55:37 GMT Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] format-patch: better commit list for cover letter Message-ID: In-Reply-To: Mirko Faina writes: > On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 08:54:50PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: >> (1) Drop the abbreviated object name, as they are useless garbage. >> The result of applying these patches will not have these commit >> object names anyway, so even when people find these messages on >> a mail archive in 6 months, they will not find the result of >> applying the patches from the official project history with >> these object names. > > Should there be a reference to the author ident instead of the object > name then? A quick glance on who worked on what before diving into the > patches themselves might be useful. > >> (2) Do we need to make this optional, in order to allow those users >> who do prefer the current "shortlog" style that groups patches >> from the same person together to keep the original style? I am >> undecided myself. > > Maybe the "--cover-letter" option can take an argument like > "--cover-letter=". Although I doubt there's > anyone that actually likes the shortlog version, it gives very little > information. I'm inclined to think that most leave it there because they > think it must be somewhat since it is the default, tho this is just my > assumption. Just off the top of my head... Perhaps with [format] commitListFormat ;# true we use [1/1] format-patch: better commit list for cover letter and with [format] commitListFormat="%s (%an)" we use [1/1] format-patch: better commit list for cover letter (Mirko Faina) instead. IOW, the value of the configuration variable is used as the format argument "log --format=...", and appended to the fixed [n/m] that gives the numbers. Without format.commitListFormat defined, or when it is defined to false, we'd use the traditional "shortlog" format. Hmm?