From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 85450AA5 for ; Sat, 24 Aug 2019 18:11:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-lj1-f193.google.com (mail-lj1-f193.google.com [209.85.208.193]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id ABC04B0 for ; Sat, 24 Aug 2019 18:11:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-lj1-f193.google.com with SMTP id x18so11686456ljh.1 for ; Sat, 24 Aug 2019 11:11:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-lf1-f45.google.com (mail-lf1-f45.google.com. [209.85.167.45]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id s10sm1243199ljm.35.2019.08.24.11.11.48 for (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 bits=128/128); Sat, 24 Aug 2019 11:11:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by mail-lf1-f45.google.com with SMTP id f21so4427737lfc.5 for ; Sat, 24 Aug 2019 11:11:48 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20190823013619.GA8130@mit.edu> <20190823151843.GH8130@mit.edu> <20190823161947.GA112509@dtor-ws> <20190823164602.GB112509@dtor-ws> In-Reply-To: From: Linus Torvalds Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2019 11:11:32 -0700 Message-ID: To: Doug Anderson Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Cc: Joel Fernandes , Barret Rhoden , ksummit , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Jonathan Nieder , Tomasz Figa , Han-Wen Nienhuys , Theodore Tso , Dmitry Vyukov , David Rientjes , Dmitry Torokhov Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] Allowing something Change-Id (or something like it) in kernel commits List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 9:35 AM Doug Anderson wrote: > > I have no gerrit server involved when I submit patches to the list. I do: > > 1. Write patch on my local machine. > 2. Post v1 to mailing list. > 3. Make changes. > 4. Post v2 to mailing list. > 5. Make changes. > 5. Post v3 to mailing list. > > I have never uploaded to a gerrit in this process. THERE IS NO GERRIT LINK! First off, there *is* a link - just use the mailing list email link (preferably for the cover letter - so that a whole series has _one_ ID, not separate ID's for every patch) just like everybody else does, which also means that you get the history of actual other developers replying to it (including after it has been committed). The first time it gets magically and reliably created for you without you having to do a single thing. The second time, you just look it up. Ta-daa - you have a "uuid" that is useful to others, and that describes the whole series unambiguously. So the mailing list archive link is objectively better. You don't have to make up some new way to generate a unique ID - one already exists. Any other UUID would be completely pointless. And don't try to argue that it is anything _but_ pointless. As far as everybody else in the whole wide world is concerned, it would be better if you just pointed to the original submission, not to some made-up-makes-sense-only-to-you UUID that others would have to google and hope for the best. End result: if you actually want to be useful to *other* people, then when you do your "v2" posting of the patch series, instead of that completely useless UUID, just link to the previous posted version in the new cover letter. Now that link exists and is useful for others too, both from a git history standpoint, but also from a "look, this is the last time I posted this, just to remind you, or you can go look at the comments then and verify that they got fixed up". In other words, stop arguing for an objectively much worse UUID. You can have it locally if you want to, but realize that NOBODY ELSE finds it the least useful at all. It's just random noise you yourself generated for your own use, and isn't interesting or relevant to anybody else. In contrast, if you actually put a link to a previous conversation, that link will be valid and useful even if (a) it wasn't even a previous conversion on that mailing list at all, but a link to something like a bugzilla entry, or a CPU vendor errata sheet or whatever (b) even if it was a previous conversation on the mailing list, maybe it wasn't one that you started, but you're instead basing your series (partially or wholly) on somebody elses earlier work. Notice how a UUID fundamentally could not handle either of the above obvious cases. Nobody else generates a uuid for you (except for that message-id-uuid that already exists). So stop arguing for UUID's. They are fundamentally a bad idea. The *only* actual valid reason I have ever seen for UUID's (and yes, this is not the first time they've been brought up, which is why I hate them with a passion) is to use it as a magic link inside some vendors private database when that vendor doesn't want to expose any actual real information. In other words: UUID's are bad and pointless. Their only "valid" use is explicitly against the whole point of open development. Use an actual open standard instead: a web link. It can be anything. It can be a link to a previous version, it can be a link to further documentation, it can be a link to _anything_ on the internet for later reference. And if it isn't on the internet visible to everybody else, then it should be described outright in the commit message itself. Or it shouldn't be there at all. Are there other possibly valid things? Yes. But they do not include UUID's. For example, if you want to refer to something in the physical world, and you can't find a link to it online, by all means use other standard and public ways to do that. Use the ISBN for a book or an ISSN for a magazine. Or use the address for a physical location, whatever. That's not a random and meaningless number, it's something useful that can be looked up later and thus quite possibly worth saving in a commit message. There are probably hundreds of those "useful to be looked up later" things. But a UUID is not one of them. Linus