1Checklist (and a short version for the impatient): 2 3 Commits: 4 5 - make commits of logical units 6 - check for unnecessary whitespace with "git diff --check" 7 before committing 8 - do not check in commented out code or unneeded files 9 - provide a meaningful commit message 10 - the first line of the commit message should be a short 11 description and should skip the full stop 12 - if you want your work included in git.git, add a 13 "Signed-off-by: Your Name <you@example.com>" line to the 14 commit message (or just use the option "-s" when 15 committing) to confirm that you agree to the Developer's 16 Certificate of Origin 17 - make sure that you have tests for the bug you are fixing 18 - make sure that the test suite passes after your commit 19 20 Patch: 21 22 - use "git format-patch -M" to create the patch 23 - do not PGP sign your patch 24 - do not attach your patch, but read in the mail 25 body, unless you cannot teach your mailer to 26 leave the formatting of the patch alone. 27 - be careful doing cut & paste into your mailer, not to 28 corrupt whitespaces. 29 - provide additional information (which is unsuitable for 30 the commit message) between the "---" and the diffstat 31 - if you change, add, or remove a command line option or 32 make some other user interface change, the associated 33 documentation should be updated as well. 34 - if your name is not writable in ASCII, make sure that 35 you send off a message in the correct encoding. 36 - send the patch to the list (git@vger.kernel.org) and the 37 maintainer (gitster@pobox.com) if (and only if) the patch 38 is ready for inclusion. If you use git-send-email(1), 39 please test it first by sending email to yourself. 40 41Long version: 42 43I started reading over the SubmittingPatches document for Linux 44kernel, primarily because I wanted to have a document similar to 45it for the core GIT to make sure people understand what they are 46doing when they write "Signed-off-by" line. 47 48But the patch submission requirements are a lot more relaxed 49here on the technical/contents front, because the core GIT is 50thousand times smaller ;-). So here is only the relevant bits. 51 52 53(1) Make separate commits for logically separate changes. 54 55Unless your patch is really trivial, you should not be sending 56out a patch that was generated between your working tree and 57your commit head. Instead, always make a commit with complete 58commit message and generate a series of patches from your 59repository. It is a good discipline. 60 61Describe the technical detail of the change(s). 62 63If your description starts to get too long, that's a sign that you 64probably need to split up your commit to finer grained pieces. 65 66Oh, another thing. I am picky about whitespaces. Make sure your 67changes do not trigger errors with the sample pre-commit hook shipped 68in templates/hooks--pre-commit. To help ensure this does not happen, 69run git diff --check on your changes before you commit. 70 71 72(1a) Try to be nice to older C compilers 73 74We try to support wide range of C compilers to compile 75git with. That means that you should not use C99 initializers, even 76if a lot of compilers grok it. 77 78Also, variables have to be declared at the beginning of the block 79(you can check this with gcc, using the -Wdeclaration-after-statement 80option). 81 82Another thing: NULL pointers shall be written as NULL, not as 0. 83 84 85(2) Generate your patch using git tools out of your commits. 86 87git based diff tools (git, Cogito, and StGIT included) generate 88unidiff which is the preferred format. 89 90You do not have to be afraid to use -M option to "git diff" or 91"git format-patch", if your patch involves file renames. The 92receiving end can handle them just fine. 93 94Please make sure your patch does not include any extra files 95which do not belong in a patch submission. Make sure to review 96your patch after generating it, to ensure accuracy. Before 97sending out, please make sure it cleanly applies to the "master" 98branch head. If you are preparing a work based on "next" branch, 99that is fine, but please mark it as such. 100 101 102(3) Sending your patches. 103 104People on the git mailing list need to be able to read and 105comment on the changes you are submitting. It is important for 106a developer to be able to "quote" your changes, using standard 107e-mail tools, so that they may comment on specific portions of 108your code. For this reason, all patches should be submitted 109"inline". WARNING: Be wary of your MUAs word-wrap 110corrupting your patch. Do not cut-n-paste your patch; you can 111lose tabs that way if you are not careful. 112 113It is a common convention to prefix your subject line with 114[PATCH]. This lets people easily distinguish patches from other 115e-mail discussions. Use of additional markers after PATCH and 116the closing bracket to mark the nature of the patch is also 117encouraged. E.g. [PATCH/RFC] is often used when the patch is 118not ready to be applied but it is for discussion, [PATCH v2], 119[PATCH v3] etc. are often seen when you are sending an update to 120what you have previously sent. 121 122"git format-patch" command follows the best current practice to 123format the body of an e-mail message. At the beginning of the 124patch should come your commit message, ending with the 125Signed-off-by: lines, and a line that consists of three dashes, 126followed by the diffstat information and the patch itself. If 127you are forwarding a patch from somebody else, optionally, at 128the beginning of the e-mail message just before the commit 129message starts, you can put a "From: " line to name that person. 130 131You often want to add additional explanation about the patch, 132other than the commit message itself. Place such "cover letter" 133material between the three dash lines and the diffstat. 134 135Do not attach the patch as a MIME attachment, compressed or not. 136Do not let your e-mail client send quoted-printable. Do not let 137your e-mail client send format=flowed which would destroy 138whitespaces in your patches. Many 139popular e-mail applications will not always transmit a MIME 140attachment as plain text, making it impossible to comment on 141your code. A MIME attachment also takes a bit more time to 142process. This does not decrease the likelihood of your 143MIME-attached change being accepted, but it makes it more likely 144that it will be postponed. 145 146Exception: If your mailer is mangling patches then someone may ask 147you to re-send them using MIME, that is OK. 148 149Do not PGP sign your patch, at least for now. Most likely, your 150maintainer or other people on the list would not have your PGP 151key and would not bother obtaining it anyway. Your patch is not 152judged by who you are; a good patch from an unknown origin has a 153far better chance of being accepted than a patch from a known, 154respected origin that is done poorly or does incorrect things. 155 156If you really really really really want to do a PGP signed 157patch, format it as "multipart/signed", not a text/plain message 158that starts with '-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----'. That is 159not a text/plain, it's something else. 160 161Note that your maintainer does not necessarily read everything 162on the git mailing list. If your patch is for discussion first, 163send it "To:" the mailing list, and optionally "cc:" him. If it 164is trivially correct or after the list reached a consensus, send 165it "To:" the maintainer and optionally "cc:" the list for 166inclusion. 167 168Also note that your maintainer does not actively involve himself in 169maintaining what are in contrib/ hierarchy. When you send fixes and 170enhancements to them, do not forget to "cc: " the person who primarily 171worked on that hierarchy in contrib/. 172 173 174(4) Sign your work 175 176To improve tracking of who did what, we've borrowed the 177"sign-off" procedure from the Linux kernel project on patches 178that are being emailed around. Although core GIT is a lot 179smaller project it is a good discipline to follow it. 180 181The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for 182the patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have 183the right to pass it on as a open-source patch. The rules are 184pretty simple: if you can certify the below: 185 186 Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1 187 188 By making a contribution to this project, I certify that: 189 190 (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I 191 have the right to submit it under the open source license 192 indicated in the file; or 193 194 (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best 195 of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source 196 license and I have the right under that license to submit that 197 work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part 198 by me, under the same open source license (unless I am 199 permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated 200 in the file; or 201 202 (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other 203 person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified 204 it. 205 206 (d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution 207 are public and that a record of the contribution (including all 208 personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is 209 maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with 210 this project or the open source license(s) involved. 211 212then you just add a line saying 213 214 Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org> 215 216This line can be automatically added by git if you run the git-commit 217command with the -s option. 218 219Some people also put extra tags at the end. They'll just be ignored for 220now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures or just 221point out some special detail about the sign-off. 222 223 224------------------------------------------------ 225MUA specific hints 226 227Some of patches I receive or pick up from the list share common 228patterns of breakage. Please make sure your MUA is set up 229properly not to corrupt whitespaces. Here are two common ones 230I have seen: 231 232* Empty context lines that do not have _any_ whitespace. 233 234* Non empty context lines that have one extra whitespace at the 235 beginning. 236 237One test you could do yourself if your MUA is set up correctly is: 238 239* Send the patch to yourself, exactly the way you would, except 240 To: and Cc: lines, which would not contain the list and 241 maintainer address. 242 243* Save that patch to a file in UNIX mailbox format. Call it say 244 a.patch. 245 246* Try to apply to the tip of the "master" branch from the 247 git.git public repository: 248 249 $ git fetch http://kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git master:test-apply 250 $ git checkout test-apply 251 $ git reset --hard 252 $ git am a.patch 253 254If it does not apply correctly, there can be various reasons. 255 256* Your patch itself does not apply cleanly. That is _bad_ but 257 does not have much to do with your MUA. Please rebase the 258 patch appropriately. 259 260* Your MUA corrupted your patch; "am" would complain that 261 the patch does not apply. Look at .dotest/ subdirectory and 262 see what 'patch' file contains and check for the common 263 corruption patterns mentioned above. 264 265* While you are at it, check what are in 'info' and 266 'final-commit' files as well. If what is in 'final-commit' is 267 not exactly what you would want to see in the commit log 268 message, it is very likely that your maintainer would end up 269 hand editing the log message when he applies your patch. 270 Things like "Hi, this is my first patch.\n", if you really 271 want to put in the patch e-mail, should come after the 272 three-dash line that signals the end of the commit message. 273 274 275Pine 276---- 277 278(Johannes Schindelin) 279 280I don't know how many people still use pine, but for those poor 281souls it may be good to mention that the quell-flowed-text is 282needed for recent versions. 283 284... the "no-strip-whitespace-before-send" option, too. AFAIK it 285was introduced in 4.60. 286 287(Linus Torvalds) 288 289And 4.58 needs at least this. 290 291--- 292diff-tree 8326dd8350be64ac7fc805f6563a1d61ad10d32c (from e886a61f76edf5410573e92e38ce22974f9c40f1) 293Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org> 294Date: Mon Aug 15 17:23:51 2005 -0700 295 296 Fix pine whitespace-corruption bug 297 298 There's no excuse for unconditionally removing whitespace from 299 the pico buffers on close. 300 301diff --git a/pico/pico.c b/pico/pico.c 302--- a/pico/pico.c 303+++ b/pico/pico.c 304@@ -219,7 +219,9 @@ PICO *pm; 305 switch(pico_all_done){ /* prepare for/handle final events */ 306 case COMP_EXIT : /* already confirmed */ 307 packheader(); 308+#if 0 309 stripwhitespace(); 310+#endif 311 c |= COMP_EXIT; 312 break; 313 314 315(Daniel Barkalow) 316 317> A patch to SubmittingPatches, MUA specific help section for 318> users of Pine 4.63 would be very much appreciated. 319 320Ah, it looks like a recent version changed the default behavior to do the 321right thing, and inverted the sense of the configuration option. (Either 322that or Gentoo did it.) So you need to set the 323"no-strip-whitespace-before-send" option, unless the option you have is 324"strip-whitespace-before-send", in which case you should avoid checking 325it. 326 327 328Thunderbird 329----------- 330 331(A Large Angry SCM) 332 333Here are some hints on how to successfully submit patches inline using 334Thunderbird. 335 336This recipe appears to work with the current [*1*] Thunderbird from Suse. 337 338The following Thunderbird extensions are needed: 339 AboutConfig 0.5 340 http://aboutconfig.mozdev.org/ 341 External Editor 0.7.2 342 http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=8 343 3441) Prepare the patch as a text file using your method of choice. 345 3462) Before opening a compose window, use Edit->Account Settings to 347uncheck the "Compose messages in HTML format" setting in the 348"Composition & Addressing" panel of the account to be used to send the 349patch. [*2*] 350 3513) In the main Thunderbird window, _before_ you open the compose window 352for the patch, use Tools->about:config to set the following to the 353indicated values: 354 mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed => false 355 mailnews.wraplength => 0 356 3574) Open a compose window and click the external editor icon. 358 3595) In the external editor window, read in the patch file and exit the 360editor normally. 361 3626) Back in the compose window: Add whatever other text you wish to the 363message, complete the addressing and subject fields, and press send. 364 3657) Optionally, undo the about:config/account settings changes made in 366steps 2 & 3. 367 368 369[Footnotes] 370*1* Version 1.0 (20041207) from the MozillaThunderbird-1.0-5 rpm of Suse 3719.3 professional updates. 372 373*2* It may be possible to do this with about:config and the following 374settings but I haven't tried, yet. 375 mail.html_compose => false 376 mail.identity.default.compose_html => false 377 mail.identity.id?.compose_html => false 378 379 380Gnus 381---- 382 383'|' in the *Summary* buffer can be used to pipe the current 384message to an external program, and this is a handy way to drive 385"git am". However, if the message is MIME encoded, what is 386piped into the program is the representation you see in your 387*Article* buffer after unwrapping MIME. This is often not what 388you would want for two reasons. It tends to screw up non ASCII 389characters (most notably in people's names), and also 390whitespaces (fatal in patches). Running 'C-u g' to display the 391message in raw form before using '|' to run the pipe can work 392this problem around. 393 394 395KMail 396----- 397 398This should help you to submit patches inline using KMail. 399 4001) Prepare the patch as a text file. 401 4022) Click on New Mail. 403 4043) Go under "Options" in the Composer window and be sure that 405"Word wrap" is not set. 406 4074) Use Message -> Insert file... and insert the patch. 408 4095) Back in the compose window: add whatever other text you wish to the 410message, complete the addressing and subject fields, and press send.