Re: storing cover letter of a patch series?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 8, 2016, 20:09 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqk2frdnud.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kba36GprgHA04_q4NmY2=_amoWyafUaLKkcknc3HsT_-g@mail.gmail.com>

Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:

Show 21 quoted lines

> On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 9:28 AM, Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hey,
>>
>> does anyone know of any tricks for storing a cover letter for a patch
>> series inside of git somehow? I'd guess the only obvious way currently
>> is to store it at the top of the series as an empty commit.. but this
>> doesn't get emailed *as* the cover letter...
>>
>> Is there some other way? Would others be interested in such a feature?
>
> Being late to this thread, but I think
>
>        branch.<name>.description
>            Branch description, can be edited with git branch
>            --edit-description. Branch description is automatically added in
>            the format-patch cover letter or request-pull summary.
>
> is what you want. Maybe we want to see a patch that adds the reverse
> functionality as well, i.e. git-am will store the the cover letter as the
> branch description and git-merge will propose the branch description for
> the merge commit.

Yes, but... ;-) It is a bit too weak to be called a proper part of a "version control system", in that the description, even though it can be edited with "--edit-description", is not versioned.

It is consistent with the fact that rerolls of your branch by rebuilding with "rebase -i" or "checkout --detached && until satisified; do cherry-pick && commit --amend; done" is not versioned and you may resort to the old-fashioned my-topic, my-topic-v2, my-topic-v3, ..., but being consistent with a bad part of the system does not deny the fact that it is a weak feature.