Re: storing cover letter of a patch series?

[Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 11:49 PM, Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 11:38 PM, Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 11:28 PM, Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> wrote:
>>> I would imagine this is similar to the pull requests on the linux
>>> mailing list, i.e.
>>> how it is with merges. Back in the time we did not open the editor for you to
>>> talk about the merge you just did, and then we started doing that.
>>>
>>> So what to do when the description already exists?
>>>
>>> We could amend the description separated by a
>>>
>>>      # comment, below was added:
>>>
>>> line or such and then open the editor asked for user input.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Stefan
>>>
>>
>> This is why my gut feeling is that we should instead have a separate
>> way to store a cover letter, as it doesn't necessarily have to apply
>> to a branch
>
> Well in our workflow each series has at least one merge commit.
> (You *could* have different descriptions for the different branches,
> e.g. for maint: "fixes a segfault so let's get this in, but it needs to be
> redone properly" and for pu: "TODO: revert this partially
> when branch $proper-fix is merged")
>
>> or a merge commit, but could just be annotation against a
>> series of commits (maybe stored as base + tip, since most series would
>> be linear in nature?)
>
> We could suggest to use a merge always strategy for this, i.e. as soon as
> you send a cover-letter, we'll make a merge for you whose parents are the
> old HEAD and the new series?
>
> If the user strictly wants to have a linear history, then we could try some
> empty commit magic before or after the series, but I doubt this is proper.
>
> If users insist on linear history, they deny the benefits of a DAG that
> represents how the source code evolved. (Also see the eternal rebase
> vs merge discussion ;)
>

I think you're right this can go into a merge commit and if a user
insists on linear history it's their fault.

>>
>> However, opening an editor and amending seems quite reasonable to me
>> if we're just editing branch description, and then storing that as
>> part of merge commit would be reasonable?
>>
>> I really think we want some alternative way to store it for other use
>> cases besides the description, though.
>
> "besides the description"?

I think my brain shut down. I'm not really sure what I meant but I
think I meant "we want some other way to make the cover letter
permanent because the branch description isn't shared".... So... no I
have no real idea what I was trying to say here.

Thanks,
Jake

>
> What do you mean by that?
>
> Thanks,
> Stefan
>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Jake