- the first line of the commit message should be a short
description (50 characters is the soft limit, see DISCUSSION
in git-commit(1)), and should skip the full stop
+ - it is also conventional in most cases to prefix the
+ first line with "area: " where the area is a filename
+ or identifier for the general area of the code being
+ modified, e.g.
+ . archive: ustar header checksum is computed unsigned
+ . git-cherry-pick.txt: clarify the use of revision range notation
+ (if in doubt which identifier to use, run "git log --no-merges"
+ on the files you are modifying to see the current conventions)
- the body should provide a meaningful commit message, which:
. explains the problem the change tries to solve, iow, what
is wrong with the current code without the change.
Long version:
-I started reading over the SubmittingPatches document for Linux
-kernel, primarily because I wanted to have a document similar to
-it for the core GIT to make sure people understand what they are
-doing when they write "Signed-off-by" line.
-
-But the patch submission requirements are a lot more relaxed
-here on the technical/contents front, because the core GIT is
-thousand times smaller ;-). So here is only the relevant bits.
+Here are some guidelines for people who want to contribute their code
+to this software.
(0) Decide what to base your work on.
wait until some of the dependent topics graduate to 'master', and
rebase your work.
+ - Some parts of the system have dedicated maintainers with their own
+ repositories (see the section "Subsystems" below). Changes to
+ these parts should be based on their trees.
+
To find the tip of a topic branch, run "git log --first-parent
master..pu" and look for the merge commit. The second parent of this
commit is the tip of the topic branch.
run git diff --check on your changes before you commit.
-(1a) Try to be nice to older C compilers
-
-We try to support a wide range of C compilers to compile
-git with. That means that you should not use C99 initializers, even
-if a lot of compilers grok it.
-
-Also, variables have to be declared at the beginning of the block
-(you can check this with gcc, using the -Wdeclaration-after-statement
-option).
-
-Another thing: NULL pointers shall be written as NULL, not as 0.
-
-
(2) Generate your patch using git tools out of your commits.
git based diff tools generate unidiff which is the preferred format.
You can also create your own tag or use one that's in common usage
such as "Thanks-to:", "Based-on-patch-by:", or "Mentored-by:".
+------------------------------------------------
+Subsystems with dedicated maintainers
+
+Some parts of the system have dedicated maintainers with their own
+repositories.
+
+ - git-gui/ comes from git-gui project, maintained by Pat Thoyts:
+
+ git://repo.or.cz/git-gui.git
+
+ - gitk-git/ comes from Paul Mackerras's gitk project:
+
+ git://ozlabs.org/~paulus/gitk
+
+ - po/ comes from the localization coordinator, Jiang Xin:
+
+ https://github.com/git-l10n/git-po/
+
+Patches to these parts should be based on their trees.
+
------------------------------------------------
An ideal patch flow