Re: [kernel.org users] b4: encouraging using the cover letter in merge commits?

["James Bottomley" <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Sat, 2020-12-19 at 19:17 -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:
> Em Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 01:57:06PM -0800, James Bottomley escreveu:
> > On Sat, 2020-12-19 at 18:43 -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:
> > > But we are digressing, assuming what is in the cover letter is
> > > not what should be in individual commits but has value, why not
> > > have it preserved upstream?
>  
> > Because on its own it's incomplete and we have other mechanisms to
> > keep the full historical record.
> 
> I agree that link tags points to the relevant discussion, and I hope
> that where that is preserved is available as long as the main repo is
> available, but that is only a hope, as it is disjoint from the main
> repository, keeping such valuable information in the main repository
> is still important IMHO.

OK, so I think we see the email archives in different ways.  I see them
as a thing, like the repo, which will always be there.  Even if
kernel.org gets sold off by the LF and we lose lore, there are a bunch
of internet heritage and archive projects making sure our history will
be preserved.  The link tag, since it's based on the msgid, will always
be usable through them.

I think you see this as less certain, hence the need to save the cover
letter, so in essence this comes down to *who* should preserve the
information.

> Its not like having cover letters in the main repository will cause
> major disruption or excessive overhead.

I'm not saying no-one should do it, I'm saying preserving cover letters
in merge commits is incompatible with the current linear workflow and
that link tags with that workflow provides a superset of the
information in the cover letter so there's no reason for anyone using
the linear workflow to move to a merge commit workflow.

James