Re: Idea: "git format-patch" should get more information out of git

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 11:34:13PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> 
> > Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> writes:
> >
> >> 4. There is no place to store the "additional information" (the part
> >> that comes in patch emails between the "---" and the diffstat) while
> >> working on the patch series;...
> >
> > I thought there was a RFC floating around to do this using notes and also
> > teach it to "commit -e" a few months ago? I vaguelly recall that Peff and
> > one of the J's were involved, so I am CC'ing them.
> 
> Also, when I prepare a commit to be sent with an additional piece of
> information, I often write "---" and the additional message after my
> S-o-b: line while preparing the commit log message. Unlike format-patch
> that strips that off, commit keeps it, which is handy.

After playing around a bit with my earlier series, I made the
realization (perhaps obvious to others :) ), that if you are in a
pure-patch workflow, keeping the "---" in your commit message locally is
much simpler. It follows the commit around through rebases
automatically, it gets put into format-patch output automatically, and
so forth.

The only real downside is that you can never tell git "don't show me the
cover letter cruft". Which is probably OK for your own local patches.
But the point of the "---" is that information should never make it into
a repo, which means in any workflow that involves pulling actual git
commits, it won't work (after reading Michael's response in another
thread, though, I think he would be interested in a hybrid
pull-or-apply-via-mail system).

-Peff