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:
-
-* Empty context lines that do not have _any_ whitespace.
-
-* 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.
+properly not to corrupt whitespaces.
+
+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).
+
+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
patch is in response to, so it is likely that you would want to keep
the Subject: line, like the example above.
+Checking for patch corruption
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+Many mailers if not set up properly will corrupt whitespace. Here are
+two common types of corruption:
+
+* Empty context lines that do not have _any_ whitespace.
+
+* Non-empty context lines that have one extra whitespace at the
+ beginning.
+
+One way to test if your MUA is set up correctly is:
+
+* Send the patch to yourself, exactly the way you would, except
+ with To: and Cc: lines that do not contain the list and
+ maintainer address.
+
+* Save that patch to a file in UNIX mailbox format. Call it a.patch,
+ say.
+
+* Apply it:
+
+ $ git fetch <project> 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.
+
+* The patch itself does not apply cleanly. That is _bad_ but
+ does not have much to do with your MUA. You might want to rebase
+ the patch with linkgit:git-rebase[1] before regenerating it in
+ this case.
+
+* The MUA corrupted your patch; "am" would complain that
+ the patch does not apply. Look in the .git/rebase-apply/ subdirectory and
+ see what 'patch' file contains and check for the common
+ corruption patterns mentioned above.
+
+* While at it, check the '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 the
+ receiver would end up hand editing the log message when applying
+ your patch. Things like "Hi, this is my first patch.\n" in the
+ patch e-mail should come after the three-dash line that signals
+ the end of the commit message.
+
EXAMPLES
--------