- check for unnecessary whitespace with "git diff --check"
before committing
- do not check in commented out code or unneeded files
- - provide a meaningful commit message
- the first line of the commit message should be a short
description and should skip the full stop
+ - the body should provide a meaningful commit message, which:
+ - uses the imperative, present tense: "change",
+ not "changed" or "changes".
+ - includes motivation for the change, and contrasts
+ its implementation with previous behaviour
- if you want your work included in git.git, add a
"Signed-off-by: Your Name <you@example.com>" line to the
commit message (or just use the option "-s" when
If your description starts to get too long, that's a sign that you
probably need to split up your commit to finer grained pieces.
+That being said, patches which plainly describe the things that
+help reviewers check the patch, and future maintainers understand
+the code, are the most beautiful patches. Descriptions that summarise
+the point in the subject well, and describe the motivation for the
+change, the approach taken by the change, and if relevant how this
+differs substantially from the prior version, can be found on Usenet
+archives back into the late 80's. Consider it like good Netiquette,
+but for code.
Oh, another thing. I am picky about whitespaces. Make sure your
changes do not trigger errors with the sample pre-commit hook shipped
people play with it without having to pick up and apply the patch to
their trees themselves.
+------------------------------------------------
+Know the status of your patch after submission
+
+* You can use Git itself to find out when your patch is merged in
+ master. 'git pull --rebase' will automatically skip already-applied
+ patches, and will let you know. This works only if you rebase on top
+ of the branch in which your patch has been merged (i.e. it will not
+ tell you if your patch is merged in pu if you rebase on top of
+ master).
+
+* Read the git mailing list, the maintainer regularly posts messages
+ entitled "What's cooking in git.git" and "What's in git.git" giving
+ the status of various proposed changes.
+
------------------------------------------------
MUA specific hints
GMail does not appear to have any way to turn off line wrapping in the web
interface, so this will mangle any emails that you send. You can however
use any IMAP email client to connect to the google imap server, and forward
-the emails through that. Just make sure to disable line wrapping in that
-email client. Alternatively, use "git send-email" instead.
+the emails through that.
-Submitting properly formatted patches via Gmail is simple now that
-IMAP support is available. First, edit your ~/.gitconfig to specify your
+To submit using the IMAP interface, first, edit your ~/.gitconfig to specify your
account settings:
[imap]
You might need to instead use: folder = "[Google Mail]/Drafts" if you get an error
that the "Folder doesn't exist".
-Next, ensure that your Gmail settings are correct. In "Settings" the
-"Use Unicode (UTF-8) encoding for outgoing messages" should be checked.
+Once your commits are ready to be sent to the mailing list, run the
+following command to send the patch emails to your Gmail Drafts
+folder.
-Once your commits are ready to send to the mailing list, run the following
-command to send the patch emails to your Gmail Drafts folder.
+ $ git format-patch --cover-letter -M --stdout origin/master | git imap-send
+
+Just make sure to disable line wrapping in the email client (GMail web
+interface will line wrap no matter what, so you need to use a real
+IMAP client).
+
+Alternatively, you can use "git send-email" and send your patches
+through the GMail SMTP server. edit ~/.gitconfig to specify your
+account settings:
- $ git format-patch -M --stdout origin/master | git imap-send
+[sendemail]
+ smtpencryption = tls
+ smtpserver = smtp.gmail.com
+ smtpuser = user@gmail.com
+ smtppass = p4ssw0rd
+ smtpserverport = 587
-Go to your Gmail account, open the Drafts folder, find the patch email, fill
-in the To: and CC: fields and send away!
+Once your commits are ready to be sent to the mailing list, run the
+following commands:
+ $ git format-patch --cover-letter -M origin/master -o outgoing/
+ $ git send-email outgoing/*