Re: git format-patch -s enhancement

[jim.cromie@gmail.com]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 10:37 AM Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Aug 15, 2021 at 05:07:34PM -0600, jim.cromie@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > git format-patch -s is sub-optimal :
> > it appends the SoB,
> > which falls after the snips
> > ---
> > changelog ...
> > that the commit message may contain
> >
> >
> > So it misfires on any maintainer scripts
> > expecting the SoB above the 1st snip.
> >
> > The workaround is manual SoBs above any snips.
> >
> > I note this in -s doc,
> >
> >            Add a Signed-off-by trailer to the commit message, using
> > the committer identity of yourself.
> >            See the signoff option in git-commit(1) for more information.
> >
> > "trailer" is really "document current working behavior"
> > (normative docu-speak, so to speak;)
> >
> > Ideal behavior is to find 1st in-body  --- snip
> > and insert there
>
> The big disconnect here is that "---" snip lines are not meant to be
> meaningful within commit messages themselves. They are part of the
> process of sticking a commit message into an email. So format-patch and
> git-am know about them, but "git commit" for example doesn't.
>
> So "git commit --signoff" probably shouldn't take them into account when
> deciding the end of a commit message. The user might or might not have
> meant "---" to be syntactically meaningful, depending on whether they
> plan to send the message with format-patch (and changing the behavior
> now is questionable).
>
> Doing so with "git format-patch --signoff" is a slightly different
> question.  The current behavior is working as intended, in the sense
> that it signs off just as "commit -s" would, and then separately sticks
> the result into the email. The fact that "---" in the commit message is
> indistinguishable from the ones added by format-patch is mostly an
> accident.
>
> That said, it's kind of a useful accident for some workflows, exactly
> because you can carry these non-commit-message notes inside the commit
> message. And since we know how any in-commit-message "---" will be
> treated by git-am on the other side, it might be reasonable for
> format-patch to start considering them to be syntactically significant.
>
> So I guess I would disagree that it's a bug exactly, in that the
> workflow you're advocating was never meant to be supported. But I don't
> see any reason we couldn't be a little friendlier to it, if somebody
> wanted to teach format-patch to do so.
>

agreed, notabug.

but it might fall afoul of others' mail handler scripts,
Ive had a couple replys implying missed delivery,
maybe because of details like '---'

Im just gonna add my SoB either at commit time, or manually.
It will be interesting to see what happens to an SoB in a commit
when its revised and --- changelogged

thanks


> An alternative workflow would be to use git-notes to attach the
> changelog data to the commit. Those are shown after the "---" by
> format-patch already. Unfortunately, keeping them up to date is kind of
> annoying. Ages ago, I had a patch to let you modify them while editing
> the commit message, which makes it pretty seamless:
>
>   https://lore.kernel.org/git/20110225133056.GA1026@sigill.intra.peff.net/
>
> I carried the patch in my local build for a while, but never really
> ended up using it. So I never polished it further. But I think it's
> still fundamentally a reasonable idea, if somebody is interested in
> carrying it forward. If so, here's the version I've been rebasing
> forward over the years:
>
>   https://github.com/peff/git jk/commit-notes-wip
>
> but it doesn't seem to actually pass its own tests anymore (so it may or
> may not be a helpful starting point. ;) ).
>
> -Peff