description (50 characters is the soft limit, see DISCUSSION
in git-commit(1)), 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
+ . explains the problem the change tries to solve, iow, what
+ is wrong with the current code without the change.
+ . justifies the way the change solves the problem, iow, why
+ the result with the change is better.
+ . alternate solutions considered but discarded, if any.
+ - describe changes in imperative mood, e.g. "make xyzzy do frotz"
+ instead of "[This patch] makes xyzzy do frotz" or "[I] changed
+ xyzzy to do frotz", as if you are giving orders to the codebase
+ to change its behaviour.
+ - try to make sure your explanation can be understood without
+ external resources. Instead of giving a URL to a mailing list
+ archive, summarize the relevant points of the discussion.
- add a "Signed-off-by: Your Name <you@example.com>" line to the
commit message (or just use the option "-s" when committing)
to confirm that you agree to the Developer's Certificate of Origin
commit message and generate a series of patches from your
repository. It is a good discipline.
-Describe the technical detail of the change(s).
+Give an explanation for the change(s) that is detailed enough so
+that people can judge if it is good thing to do, without reading
+the actual patch text to determine how well the code does what
+the explanation promises to do.
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.
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.
+differs substantially from the prior version, are all good things
+to have.
Oh, another thing. I am picky about whitespaces. Make sure your
changes do not trigger errors with the sample pre-commit hook shipped
If you like, you can put extra tags at the end:
-1. "Reported-by:" is used to to credit someone who found the bug that
+1. "Reported-by:" is used to credit someone who found the bug that
the patch attempts to fix.
2. "Acked-by:" says that the person who is more familiar with the area
the patch attempts to modify liked the patch.
Some of patches I receive or pick up from the list share common
patterns of breakage. Please make sure your MUA is set up
-properly not to corrupt whitespaces. Here are two common ones
-I have seen:
+properly not to corrupt whitespaces.
-* Empty context lines that do not have _any_ whitespace.
+See the DISCUSSION section of git-format-patch(1) for hints on
+checking your patch by mailing it to yourself and applying with
+git-am(1).
-* Non empty context lines that have one extra whitespace at the
- beginning.
-
-One test you could do yourself if your MUA is set up correctly is:
-
-* Send the patch to yourself, exactly the way you would, except
- To: and Cc: lines, which would not contain the list and
- maintainer address.
-
-* Save that patch to a file in UNIX mailbox format. Call it say
- a.patch.
-
-* Try to apply to the tip of the "master" branch from the
- git.git public repository:
-
- $ git fetch http://kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git master:test-apply
- $ git checkout test-apply
- $ git reset --hard
- $ git am a.patch
-
-If it does not apply correctly, there can be various reasons.
-
-* Your patch itself does not apply cleanly. That is _bad_ but
- does not have much to do with your MUA. Please rebase the
- patch appropriately.
-
-* Your MUA corrupted your patch; "am" would complain that
- the patch does not apply. Look at .git/rebase-apply/ subdirectory and
- see what 'patch' file contains and check for the common
- corruption patterns mentioned above.
-
-* While you are at it, check what are in 'info' and
- 'final-commit' files as well. If what is in 'final-commit' is
- not exactly what you would want to see in the commit log
- message, it is very likely that your maintainer would end up
- hand editing the log message when he applies your patch.
- Things like "Hi, this is my first patch.\n", if you really
- want to put in the patch e-mail, should come after the
- three-dash line that signals the end of the commit message.
+While you are at it, check the resulting commit log message from
+a trial run of applying the patch. If what is in the resulting
+commit is not exactly what you would want to see, it is very
+likely that your maintainer would end up hand editing the log
+message when he applies your patch. Things like "Hi, this is my
+first patch.\n", if you really want to put in the patch e-mail,
+should come after the three-dash line that signals the end of the
+commit message.
Pine
it.
-Thunderbird
------------
-
-(A Large Angry SCM)
-
-By default, Thunderbird will both wrap emails as well as flag them as
-being 'format=flowed', both of which will make the resulting email unusable
-by git.
-
-Here are some hints on how to successfully submit patches inline using
-Thunderbird.
-
-There are two different approaches. One approach is to configure
-Thunderbird to not mangle patches. The second approach is to use
-an external editor to keep Thunderbird from mangling the patches.
-
-Approach #1 (configuration):
-
-This recipe is current as of Thunderbird 2.0.0.19. Three steps:
- 1. Configure your mail server composition as plain text
- Edit...Account Settings...Composition & Addressing,
- uncheck 'Compose Messages in HTML'.
- 2. Configure your general composition window to not wrap
- Edit..Preferences..Composition, wrap plain text messages at 0
- 3. Disable the use of format=flowed
- Edit..Preferences..Advanced..Config Editor. Search for:
- mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed
- toggle it to make sure it is set to 'false'.
-
-After that is done, you should be able to compose email as you
-otherwise would (cut + paste, git-format-patch | git-imap-send, etc),
-and the patches should not be mangled.
-
-Approach #2 (external editor):
-
-This recipe appears to work with the current [*1*] Thunderbird from Suse.
-
-The following Thunderbird extensions are needed:
- AboutConfig 0.5
- http://aboutconfig.mozdev.org/
- External Editor 0.7.2
- http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=8
-
-1) Prepare the patch as a text file using your method of choice.
-
-2) Before opening a compose window, use Edit->Account Settings to
-uncheck the "Compose messages in HTML format" setting in the
-"Composition & Addressing" panel of the account to be used to send the
-patch. [*2*]
-
-3) In the main Thunderbird window, _before_ you open the compose window
-for the patch, use Tools->about:config to set the following to the
-indicated values:
- mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed => false
- mailnews.wraplength => 0
-
-4) Open a compose window and click the external editor icon.
-
-5) In the external editor window, read in the patch file and exit the
-editor normally.
-
-6) Back in the compose window: Add whatever other text you wish to the
-message, complete the addressing and subject fields, and press send.
-
-7) Optionally, undo the about:config/account settings changes made in
-steps 2 & 3.
+Thunderbird, KMail, GMail
+-------------------------
-
-[Footnotes]
-*1* Version 1.0 (20041207) from the MozillaThunderbird-1.0-5 rpm of Suse
-9.3 professional updates.
-
-*2* It may be possible to do this with about:config and the following
-settings but I haven't tried, yet.
- mail.html_compose => false
- mail.identity.default.compose_html => false
- mail.identity.id?.compose_html => false
-
-(Lukas Sandström)
-
-There is a script in contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline which can help
-you include patches with Thunderbird in an easy way. To use it, do the
-steps above and then use the script as the external editor.
+See the MUA-SPECIFIC HINTS section of git-format-patch(1).
Gnus
----
whitespaces (fatal in patches). Running 'C-u g' to display the
message in raw form before using '|' to run the pipe can work
this problem around.
-
-
-KMail
------
-
-This should help you to submit patches inline using KMail.
-
-1) Prepare the patch as a text file.
-
-2) Click on New Mail.
-
-3) Go under "Options" in the Composer window and be sure that
-"Word wrap" is not set.
-
-4) Use Message -> Insert file... and insert the patch.
-
-5) Back in the compose window: add whatever other text you wish to the
-message, complete the addressing and subject fields, and press send.
-
-
-Gmail
------
-
-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 "git send-email" and send your patches through the GMail SMTP server, or
-use any IMAP email client to connect to the google IMAP server and forward
-the emails through that.
-
-To use "git send-email" and send your patches through the GMail SMTP server,
-edit ~/.gitconfig to specify your account settings:
-
-[sendemail]
- smtpencryption = tls
- smtpserver = smtp.gmail.com
- smtpuser = user@gmail.com
- smtppass = p4ssw0rd
- smtpserverport = 587
-
-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/
- $ edit outgoing/0000-*
- $ git send-email outgoing/*
-
-To submit using the IMAP interface, first, edit your ~/.gitconfig to specify your
-account settings:
-
-[imap]
- folder = "[Gmail]/Drafts"
- host = imaps://imap.gmail.com
- user = user@gmail.com
- pass = p4ssw0rd
- port = 993
- sslverify = false
-
-You might need to instead use: folder = "[Google Mail]/Drafts" if you get an error
-that the "Folder doesn't exist".
-
-Once your commits are ready to be sent to the mailing list, run the
-following commands:
-
- $ 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).
-