Re: [PATCH v3 0/1] fetch: add trace2 instrumentation

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

"erik chen via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:

> Add trace2 regions to fetch-pack.c to better track time spent in the various
> phases of a fetch:
>
> * matching common remote and local refs
> * marking local refs as complete (part of the matching process)
>
> Both of these stages can be slow for repositories with many refs.
>
> Signed-off-by: Erik Chen erikchen@chromium.org [erikchen@chromium.org]

If the above is verbatim copy of what you wrote in 1/1, that is very
much unappreciated X-<.  A cover letter for a topic serves primarily
just one purpose:

   It is a good place to present a birds-eye-view of a multi-patch
   topic; a high level description of the problem (e.g. how the
   issue manifests to the end users), an explanation of division of
   the problem into subproblems you made (if applicable), and
   interesting highlights of the solution would all be good things
   to have in there.

And as a topic goes through iterations, it gives you a good place to
summarize what changed since the previously reviewed iterations.  It
could be just a single liner "addressed all the review comments for
the previous iteration".  A well-written multi-patch topic also uses
the same after-three-dash technique used for a single-patch topic
(see below) to summarize what changed since the corresponding patch
in the series in the previous iteration (or just says "no changes
since the previous round"---that helps the reviewers a lot).
   
For a single-patch topic, there is no place for "here is an overall
birds-eyes-view picture because the changes described in the
proposed log message of individual patches are so big and complex".
A single-patch topic has one patch, that solves one problem and only
that problem well, so it should not need such a summary.  

When you want to summarize the changes since the previous iteration,
you would write it between the three-dash-line (which appears after
your sign-off) and the diffstat.

Thanks.