Re: [PATCH v2 1/5] MyFirstContribution: add "Anatomy of a Patch Series" section

[Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>]

Hi Bagas and Junio,

Le 2022-05-11 à 17:30, Junio C Hamano a écrit :
> Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 01:47:30AM +0000, Philippe Blain via GitGitGadget wrote:
>>> +We can note a few things:
>>> +
>>> +- Each commit is sent as a separate email, with the commit message title as
>>> +  subject, prefixed with "[PATCH _i_/_n_]" for the _i_-th commit of an
>>> +  _n_-commit series.
>>> +- Each patch is sent as a reply to an introductory email called the _cover
>>> +  letter_ of the series, prefixed "[PATCH 0/_n_]".
>>> +- Subsequent iterations of the patch series are labelled "[PATCH v2]", "[PATCH
>>> +  v3]", etc. and sent with a new cover letter, itself a reply to the cover
>>> +  letter of the previous iteration (more on that below).
>>> +
>>> +At this point the tutorial diverges, in order to demonstrate two
>>>  different methods of formatting your patchset and getting it reviewed.
>>>
>>
>> In case of single-patch series submissions, the anatomy is simple: first
>> the email subject is commit message title prefixed with "[PATCH]" or
>> "[PATCH v_n_]" (in case of n-th iteration), then commit message and the
>> actual diff.
> 
> Correct.  There is no single-patch topic in the summary view shown
> in the document, so it does not belong to the above "We can note a
> few things" list.  But I agree that there should be a mention for a
> single-patch topic somewhere in this document, both for a patch and
> (the usual lack of) cover-letter for such a topic.
> 
> The sample topic this tutorial uses is a multi-patch series and
> everything in the document revolves around handing a multi-patch
> series, so finding a good place to fit it may be a bit tricky,
> though.

There is already a small section on single-patch topics, at the end of
the 'git send-email' section [1]. And I add a link to it in the GGG
section in patch 5/5.

[1] https://git-scm.com/docs/MyFirstContribution#single-patch

>> Regarding n-th iteration series, sometimes it is desirable to break the
>> threading so that the original thread (of previous iterations) doesn't
>> get too long, by sending the series as completely new thread. Some
>> contributors (including myself) prefer that way. In that case, the link
>> to previous iteration is provided to aid reviewers.
> 
> This is often not very friendly to reviewers, unless the "new topic"
> is so different that it is almost totally unrelated to the old one.
> 
> Even in a "in earlier round, we perceived X as a problem and tried
> to solve it, but it turns out it is better to solve Y instead" case,
> it often helps to learn the reason why we ended up not addressing X
> after you use "git blame" to find a commit that solved Y in a later
> iteration and wonder why an approach to solve X was not taken.  It
> is a very good idea to mention the need to add a link to a previous
> thread if the submitter decides to break the thread.

Thanks for confirming. I think for a beginner tutorial like MyFirstContribution,
we should keep things simple, so I would leave the content as-is regarding threading.
If we ever revive the "mailing list etiquette" series, then I think we could add
notes regarding this kind of things.

Cheers,
Philippe.