Putting log messages with patch submissions [was: [BOOK] [PATCH] Niggles in Chapter 3]

Simon Large wrote:
> The HACKING document specifies that patches should be in unified-diff format
> and that they should have a log message in a particular format. It does not
> state how the log message should be included in the patch.

The log message should be readable in the e-mail, which means it should either be in-line text or, if the patch is attached with a MIME type like "text/plain" so that it is readable in most e-mail programs, the log message can be prefixed to the patch file.

> Looking through the dev list, log messages seem to be prefixed to the
> unified-diff and enclosed triple square brackets:
>
> [[[
> Log message lines...
> ]]]
>
> Is this an unwritten standard, a GNU standard, or something
> else? Is the preferred patch format documented anywhere?

I regard that as an ad-hoc standard for quoting blocks of text, and thus a reasonable way of marking a log message within an e-mail message. It's just something I saw somewhere and started doing here.

Sometimes the extent of a log message is easily recognisable even without markers delimiting it. A committer will always have to cut and paste the log message, review it, and often "tweak" it, so we don't need a rigid, automatable standard for this.

> The reason for the question is that I want to propose some changes to TSVN
> to make patches easier to create and apply. Obviously if there is an
> existing standard then it should be used.

I don't know whether the TSVN project wants patches submitted in the same style that the Subversion project does, but it seems like a reasonable starting point.

- Julian

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Received on Tue Oct 5 14:46:31 2004