Are more and more patches getting lost lately?

I noticed that recently there are many patches sent to the list that are left unapplied (and many of them are from you). Many of them look useful or at least promising to become useful.

What can we, the mailing list readers, do to help these patches applied? Ask the authors of individual patches about their progress?

From: Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>
Subject: [PATCH] bash completion: Hide more plumbing commands
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:11:44 +0200
Message-ID: <20080826171144.21328.82727.stgit@localhost>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/93772

From: Karl Chen <quarl@cs.berkeley.edu>
Subject: [PATCH v4] Expand ~ and ~user in core.excludesfile, commit.template
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 02:29:00 -0700
Message-ID: <quack.20080829T0229.lthhc94rwyr_-_@roar.cs.berkeley.edu>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94276

From: Paolo Bonzini <bonzini@gnu.org>
Subject: [PATCH] add a pre-merge hook
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2008 14:19:42 +0200
Message-ID: <E1KYK3t-0000ZX-3b@fencepost.gnu.org>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/93888

From: Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsay1.demon.co.uk>
Subject: [PATCH] t9700-perl-git.sh: Fix a test failure on cygwin
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:09:15 +0100
Message-ID: <48B5984B.4020901@ramsay1.demon.co.uk>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/93912

From: Marcus Griep <marcus@griep.us>
Subject: [PATCH] git-commit: '--no-status' Allow suppression of status summary in commit msg
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:46:55 -0400
Message-ID: <1219949215-10189-1-git-send-email-marcus@griep.us>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94111

From: Garry Dolley <gdolley@arpnetworks.com>
Subject: [PATCH/RFC] Clarified how pattern works in documentation to git-show-ref.
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:37:16 -0700
Message-ID: <1219955836-10070-1-git-send-email-gdolley@arpnetworks.com>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94136

From: "Nathan Panike" <nathan.panike@gmail.com>
Subject: [PATCH 0/2] Use %as and %cs as pretty format flags
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:09:37 -0500
Message-ID: <d77df1110808280409o9445f9fybcab2c8d1066a8d8@mail.gmail.com>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94176

From: Kevin Ballard <kevin@sb.org>
Subject: [PATCH] git-am: Pass the --directory option through to git-apply
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:27:50 -0700
Message-ID: <1220048870-97641-1-git-send-email-kevin@sb.org>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94335

From: Robert Schiele <rschiele@gmail.com>
Subject: [PATCH] mention required Perl version in INSTALL
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:13:12 +0200
Message-ID: <20080830171312.GE7185@schiele.dyndns.org>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94389

From: Heikki Orsila <heikki.orsila@iki.fi>
Subject: [PATCH] Correct documentation wording for diff options -S and --pickaxe-all
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 02:03:04 +0300
Message-ID: <20080831230304.GA30480@zakalwe.fi>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94513

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: Re* [PATCH] Support diff.autorefreshindex=true in `git-diff --quiet'
Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:20:26 -0700
Message-ID: <7vy72bnk5x.fsf_-_@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94651

From: "Tom G. Christensen" <tgc@statsbiblioteket.dk>
Subject: Git 1.6.0.1 breaks git-svn with perl 5.8.0
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 11:27:59 +0200
Message-ID: <48BBB59F.9080204@statsbiblioteket.dk>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94548

From: Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org>
Subject: [PATCH] Bust the ghost of long-defunct diffcore-pathspec.
Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:53:54 +0200
Message-ID: <20080901215353.30399.33432.stgit@gandelf.nowhere.earth>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94615

From: David Aguilar <davvid@gmail.com>
Subject: [RFC/PATCH] git-mergetool: allow using merge tools for staging changes
Date: Tue,  2 Sep 2008 00:25:49 -0700
Message-ID: <ca72cec5020d847ac7d1577c586772ae22810bef.1220339887.git.davvid@gmail.com>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94660

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] ignore trailing slash when creating leading directories
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:10:15 -0700
Message-ID: <7v1w02jlu0.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org gmane.comp.version-control.git/94715

From: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Subject: [RFC PATCH] Documentation: new upstream rebase recovery section in git-rebase
Date: Tue,  2 Sep 2008 22:18:41 +0200
Message-ID: <1220386721-10215-1-git-send-email-trast@student.ethz.ch>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94701

From: Brandon Casey <casey@nrlssc.navy.mil>
Subject: [PATCH] t9301-fast-export: move unset of config variable into its own test function
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:48:49 -0500
Message-ID: <ZdQ6b4vecqtrZ-7Mze6M9UBwrI9qQRUu-BoApXUv0v2zM76stzXd3w@cipher.nrlssc.navy.mil>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/93239

Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com> writes:

Geez.  Well,... thanks.

Do you have particular ones in the list that you really want to see in-tree early, do you want all of them, or what?

That would be the way to go. I try to comment on all patches/topics that interests me, and I refrain from applying what I commented on before I see responses (and the response should not be "yes sir I'll obey blindly"; "No, the reason I did it that way was because..." to show that the submitter has thought things through is much more preferred). If there is no progress in the discussion, it is very possible that I forget, even when it is my turn to respond. "I defended my position responding to comments from you [or from the list] and I believe my argument was sound. Did you forget to apply the patch, or do you want to discuss more?" from the original submitter is very much appreciated.

Quoting Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>:

Your "diff --quiet" and Petr's bash completion.

Also there are many patches that are from *you*. Did you forget to apply them, are they buggy, or are they in any way bad?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Enable git rev-list to parse --quiet
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:10:19 -0700
Message-ID: <7vy73zd8ok.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/88994

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: [PATCH/RFC] feeding Maildir to git-am
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:25:57 -0700
Message-ID: <7vbpzotfyy.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/92963

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: Re* [PATCH] git-apply - Add --include=PATH
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:05:31 -0700
Message-ID: <7vhc99h644.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/93604

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com> wrote:

I actually liked the following 2 patch and since it was Junio I did not think support was required :-D.

Cheers,

Imran

"Imran M Yousuf" <imyousuf@gmail.com> writes:

I think for most of these patches, and other patches from me of the same nature, I tried to make it clear that the patches were primarily to illustrate possibly better solutions, and I do not consider them finished solutions.

The quality of these patches from me do not meet my patch acceptance criteria.

More importantly I wasn't the one with the itch. Onus of testing them, polishing them as necessary and providing documentation into the final applicable patch lie on the original requestors' shoulders.

Especially when I am busy.

Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com> writes:

I do not recall what the status of "diff --quiet" thing was when the discussion petered off. I'll have to dig it up later.

I've queued the bash completion from Pasky.

Be reasonable -- that's more than 5 minutes ago.

'rev-list --check-empty $args' would be equivalent to 'test -z "$(rev-list -1 $args)"'; I am not interested in it myself, and original requestor went away. I have been assuming that it is not worth our time to worry about it if the change is not even necessary by somebody who brought it up originally.

I wanted to see more positive feedback or better alternatives from people who do deal with Maildir, especially because I do not use Maildir anywhere. Again, the discussion seems to have petered out, so...

IIRC, the patch was in a good shape but without documentation and tests. I suspect reassembling the pieces from the mailing list archive into an appliable e-mail submission would have been trivial, if somebody cared deeply enough, but nothing came out of it.

Nanako Shiraishi wrote:

For this one, Junio suggested an alternative for skipping a "class" of tests which I have not followed up on. His solution needs to be tested, and the test scripts would need to be marked with class identifiers.

-brandon