mirror of
https://github.com/git/git
synced 2024-08-25 02:35:46 +00:00
![Junio C Hamano](/assets/img/avatar_default.png)
Recommend format-patch and send-email for those who want to submit patches to this project. * jc/submitting-patches-mention-send-email: SubmittingPatches: encourage users to use format-patch and send-email
465 lines
19 KiB
Plaintext
465 lines
19 KiB
Plaintext
Here are some guidelines for people who want to contribute their code
|
|
to this software.
|
|
|
|
(0) Decide what to base your work on.
|
|
|
|
In general, always base your work on the oldest branch that your
|
|
change is relevant to.
|
|
|
|
- A bugfix should be based on 'maint' in general. If the bug is not
|
|
present in 'maint', base it on 'master'. For a bug that's not yet
|
|
in 'master', find the topic that introduces the regression, and
|
|
base your work on the tip of the topic.
|
|
|
|
- A new feature should be based on 'master' in general. If the new
|
|
feature depends on a topic that is in 'pu', but not in 'master',
|
|
base your work on the tip of that topic.
|
|
|
|
- Corrections and enhancements to a topic not yet in 'master' should
|
|
be based on the tip of that topic. If the topic has not been merged
|
|
to 'next', it's alright to add a note to squash minor corrections
|
|
into the series.
|
|
|
|
- In the exceptional case that a new feature depends on several topics
|
|
not in 'master', start working on 'next' or 'pu' privately and send
|
|
out patches for discussion. Before the final merge, you may have to
|
|
wait until some of the dependent topics graduate to 'master', and
|
|
rebase your work.
|
|
|
|
- Some parts of the system have dedicated maintainers with their own
|
|
repositories (see the section "Subsystems" below). Changes to
|
|
these parts should be based on their trees.
|
|
|
|
To find the tip of a topic branch, run "git log --first-parent
|
|
master..pu" and look for the merge commit. The second parent of this
|
|
commit is the tip of the topic branch.
|
|
|
|
(1) Make separate commits for logically separate changes.
|
|
|
|
Unless your patch is really trivial, you should not be sending
|
|
out a patch that was generated between your working tree and
|
|
your commit head. Instead, always make a commit with complete
|
|
commit message and generate a series of patches from your
|
|
repository. It is a good discipline.
|
|
|
|
Give an explanation for the change(s) that is detailed enough so
|
|
that people can judge if it is good thing to do, without reading
|
|
the actual patch text to determine how well the code does what
|
|
the explanation promises to do.
|
|
|
|
If your description starts to get too long, that's a sign that you
|
|
probably need to split up your commit to finer grained pieces.
|
|
That being said, patches which plainly describe the things that
|
|
help reviewers check the patch, and future maintainers understand
|
|
the code, are the most beautiful patches. Descriptions that summarise
|
|
the point in the subject well, and describe the motivation for the
|
|
change, the approach taken by the change, and if relevant how this
|
|
differs substantially from the prior version, are all good things
|
|
to have.
|
|
|
|
Make sure that you have tests for the bug you are fixing. See
|
|
t/README for guidance.
|
|
|
|
When adding a new feature, make sure that you have new tests to show
|
|
the feature triggers the new behaviour when it should, and to show the
|
|
feature does not trigger when it shouldn't. Also make sure that the
|
|
test suite passes after your commit. Do not forget to update the
|
|
documentation to describe the updated behaviour.
|
|
|
|
Speaking of the documentation, it is currently a liberal mixture of US
|
|
and UK English norms for spelling and grammar, which is somewhat
|
|
unfortunate. A huge patch that touches the files all over the place
|
|
only to correct the inconsistency is not welcome, though. Potential
|
|
clashes with other changes that can result from such a patch are not
|
|
worth it. We prefer to gradually reconcile the inconsistencies in
|
|
favor of US English, with small and easily digestible patches, as a
|
|
side effect of doing some other real work in the vicinity (e.g.
|
|
rewriting a paragraph for clarity, while turning en_UK spelling to
|
|
en_US). Obvious typographical fixes are much more welcomed ("teh ->
|
|
"the"), preferably submitted as independent patches separate from
|
|
other documentation changes.
|
|
|
|
Oh, another thing. We are picky about whitespaces. Make sure your
|
|
changes do not trigger errors with the sample pre-commit hook shipped
|
|
in templates/hooks--pre-commit. To help ensure this does not happen,
|
|
run git diff --check on your changes before you commit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
(2) Describe your changes well.
|
|
|
|
The first line of the commit message should be a short description (50
|
|
characters is the soft limit, see DISCUSSION in git-commit(1)), and
|
|
should skip the full stop. It is also conventional in most cases to
|
|
prefix the first line with "area: " where the area is a filename or
|
|
identifier for the general area of the code being modified, e.g.
|
|
|
|
. archive: ustar header checksum is computed unsigned
|
|
. git-cherry-pick.txt: clarify the use of revision range notation
|
|
|
|
If in doubt which identifier to use, run "git log --no-merges" on the
|
|
files you are modifying to see the current conventions.
|
|
|
|
The body should provide a meaningful commit message, which:
|
|
|
|
. explains the problem the change tries to solve, iow, what is wrong
|
|
with the current code without the change.
|
|
|
|
. justifies the way the change solves the problem, iow, why the
|
|
result with the change is better.
|
|
|
|
. alternate solutions considered but discarded, if any.
|
|
|
|
Describe your changes in imperative mood, e.g. "make xyzzy do frotz"
|
|
instead of "[This patch] makes xyzzy do frotz" or "[I] changed xyzzy
|
|
to do frotz", as if you are giving orders to the codebase to change
|
|
its behaviour. Try to make sure your explanation can be understood
|
|
without external resources. Instead of giving a URL to a mailing list
|
|
archive, summarize the relevant points of the discussion.
|
|
|
|
|
|
(3) Generate your patch using Git tools out of your commits.
|
|
|
|
Git based diff tools generate unidiff which is the preferred format.
|
|
|
|
You do not have to be afraid to use -M option to "git diff" or
|
|
"git format-patch", if your patch involves file renames. The
|
|
receiving end can handle them just fine.
|
|
|
|
Please make sure your patch does not add commented out debugging code,
|
|
or include any extra files which do not relate to what your patch
|
|
is trying to achieve. Make sure to review
|
|
your patch after generating it, to ensure accuracy. Before
|
|
sending out, please make sure it cleanly applies to the "master"
|
|
branch head. If you are preparing a work based on "next" branch,
|
|
that is fine, but please mark it as such.
|
|
|
|
|
|
(4) Sending your patches.
|
|
|
|
Learn to use format-patch and send-email if possible. These commands
|
|
are optimized for the workflow of sending patches, avoiding many ways
|
|
your existing e-mail client that is optimized for "multipart/*" mime
|
|
type e-mails to corrupt and render your patches unusable.
|
|
|
|
People on the Git mailing list need to be able to read and
|
|
comment on the changes you are submitting. It is important for
|
|
a developer to be able to "quote" your changes, using standard
|
|
e-mail tools, so that they may comment on specific portions of
|
|
your code. For this reason, each patch should be submitted
|
|
"inline" in a separate message.
|
|
|
|
Multiple related patches should be grouped into their own e-mail
|
|
thread to help readers find all parts of the series. To that end,
|
|
send them as replies to either an additional "cover letter" message
|
|
(see below), the first patch, or the respective preceding patch.
|
|
|
|
If your log message (including your name on the
|
|
Signed-off-by line) is not writable in ASCII, make sure that
|
|
you send off a message in the correct encoding.
|
|
|
|
WARNING: Be wary of your MUAs word-wrap
|
|
corrupting your patch. Do not cut-n-paste your patch; you can
|
|
lose tabs that way if you are not careful.
|
|
|
|
It is a common convention to prefix your subject line with
|
|
[PATCH]. This lets people easily distinguish patches from other
|
|
e-mail discussions. Use of additional markers after PATCH and
|
|
the closing bracket to mark the nature of the patch is also
|
|
encouraged. E.g. [PATCH/RFC] is often used when the patch is
|
|
not ready to be applied but it is for discussion, [PATCH v2],
|
|
[PATCH v3] etc. are often seen when you are sending an update to
|
|
what you have previously sent.
|
|
|
|
"git format-patch" command follows the best current practice to
|
|
format the body of an e-mail message. At the beginning of the
|
|
patch should come your commit message, ending with the
|
|
Signed-off-by: lines, and a line that consists of three dashes,
|
|
followed by the diffstat information and the patch itself. If
|
|
you are forwarding a patch from somebody else, optionally, at
|
|
the beginning of the e-mail message just before the commit
|
|
message starts, you can put a "From: " line to name that person.
|
|
|
|
You often want to add additional explanation about the patch,
|
|
other than the commit message itself. Place such "cover letter"
|
|
material between the three-dash line and the diffstat. For
|
|
patches requiring multiple iterations of review and discussion,
|
|
an explanation of changes between each iteration can be kept in
|
|
Git-notes and inserted automatically following the three-dash
|
|
line via `git format-patch --notes`.
|
|
|
|
Do not attach the patch as a MIME attachment, compressed or not.
|
|
Do not let your e-mail client send quoted-printable. Do not let
|
|
your e-mail client send format=flowed which would destroy
|
|
whitespaces in your patches. Many
|
|
popular e-mail applications will not always transmit a MIME
|
|
attachment as plain text, making it impossible to comment on
|
|
your code. A MIME attachment also takes a bit more time to
|
|
process. This does not decrease the likelihood of your
|
|
MIME-attached change being accepted, but it makes it more likely
|
|
that it will be postponed.
|
|
|
|
Exception: If your mailer is mangling patches then someone may ask
|
|
you to re-send them using MIME, that is OK.
|
|
|
|
Do not PGP sign your patch, at least for now. Most likely, your
|
|
maintainer or other people on the list would not have your PGP
|
|
key and would not bother obtaining it anyway. Your patch is not
|
|
judged by who you are; a good patch from an unknown origin has a
|
|
far better chance of being accepted than a patch from a known,
|
|
respected origin that is done poorly or does incorrect things.
|
|
|
|
If you really really really really want to do a PGP signed
|
|
patch, format it as "multipart/signed", not a text/plain message
|
|
that starts with '-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----'. That is
|
|
not a text/plain, it's something else.
|
|
|
|
Send your patch with "To:" set to the mailing list, with "cc:" listing
|
|
people who are involved in the area you are touching (the output from
|
|
"git blame $path" and "git shortlog --no-merges $path" would help to
|
|
identify them), to solicit comments and reviews.
|
|
|
|
After the list reached a consensus that it is a good idea to apply the
|
|
patch, re-send it with "To:" set to the maintainer [*1*] and "cc:" the
|
|
list [*2*] for inclusion.
|
|
|
|
Do not forget to add trailers such as "Acked-by:", "Reviewed-by:" and
|
|
"Tested-by:" lines as necessary to credit people who helped your
|
|
patch.
|
|
|
|
[Addresses]
|
|
*1* The current maintainer: gitster@pobox.com
|
|
*2* The mailing list: git@vger.kernel.org
|
|
|
|
|
|
(5) Sign your work
|
|
|
|
To improve tracking of who did what, we've borrowed the
|
|
"sign-off" procedure from the Linux kernel project on patches
|
|
that are being emailed around. Although core Git is a lot
|
|
smaller project it is a good discipline to follow it.
|
|
|
|
The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for
|
|
the patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have
|
|
the right to pass it on as a open-source patch. The rules are
|
|
pretty simple: if you can certify the below:
|
|
|
|
Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
|
|
|
|
By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
|
|
|
|
(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
|
|
have the right to submit it under the open source license
|
|
indicated in the file; or
|
|
|
|
(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
|
|
of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
|
|
license and I have the right under that license to submit that
|
|
work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
|
|
by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
|
|
permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
|
|
in the file; or
|
|
|
|
(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
|
|
person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
|
|
it.
|
|
|
|
(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
|
|
are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
|
|
personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
|
|
maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
|
|
this project or the open source license(s) involved.
|
|
|
|
then you just add a line saying
|
|
|
|
Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
|
|
|
|
This line can be automatically added by Git if you run the git-commit
|
|
command with the -s option.
|
|
|
|
Notice that you can place your own Signed-off-by: line when
|
|
forwarding somebody else's patch with the above rules for
|
|
D-C-O. Indeed you are encouraged to do so. Do not forget to
|
|
place an in-body "From: " line at the beginning to properly attribute
|
|
the change to its true author (see (2) above).
|
|
|
|
Also notice that a real name is used in the Signed-off-by: line. Please
|
|
don't hide your real name.
|
|
|
|
If you like, you can put extra tags at the end:
|
|
|
|
1. "Reported-by:" is used to credit someone who found the bug that
|
|
the patch attempts to fix.
|
|
2. "Acked-by:" says that the person who is more familiar with the area
|
|
the patch attempts to modify liked the patch.
|
|
3. "Reviewed-by:", unlike the other tags, can only be offered by the
|
|
reviewer and means that she is completely satisfied that the patch
|
|
is ready for application. It is usually offered only after a
|
|
detailed review.
|
|
4. "Tested-by:" is used to indicate that the person applied the patch
|
|
and found it to have the desired effect.
|
|
|
|
You can also create your own tag or use one that's in common usage
|
|
such as "Thanks-to:", "Based-on-patch-by:", or "Mentored-by:".
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------
|
|
Subsystems with dedicated maintainers
|
|
|
|
Some parts of the system have dedicated maintainers with their own
|
|
repositories.
|
|
|
|
- git-gui/ comes from git-gui project, maintained by Pat Thoyts:
|
|
|
|
git://repo.or.cz/git-gui.git
|
|
|
|
- gitk-git/ comes from Paul Mackerras's gitk project:
|
|
|
|
git://ozlabs.org/~paulus/gitk
|
|
|
|
- po/ comes from the localization coordinator, Jiang Xin:
|
|
|
|
https://github.com/git-l10n/git-po/
|
|
|
|
Patches to these parts should be based on their trees.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------
|
|
An ideal patch flow
|
|
|
|
Here is an ideal patch flow for this project the current maintainer
|
|
suggests to the contributors:
|
|
|
|
(0) You come up with an itch. You code it up.
|
|
|
|
(1) Send it to the list and cc people who may need to know about
|
|
the change.
|
|
|
|
The people who may need to know are the ones whose code you
|
|
are butchering. These people happen to be the ones who are
|
|
most likely to be knowledgeable enough to help you, but
|
|
they have no obligation to help you (i.e. you ask for help,
|
|
don't demand). "git log -p -- $area_you_are_modifying" would
|
|
help you find out who they are.
|
|
|
|
(2) You get comments and suggestions for improvements. You may
|
|
even get them in a "on top of your change" patch form.
|
|
|
|
(3) Polish, refine, and re-send to the list and the people who
|
|
spend their time to improve your patch. Go back to step (2).
|
|
|
|
(4) The list forms consensus that the last round of your patch is
|
|
good. Send it to the maintainer and cc the list.
|
|
|
|
(5) A topic branch is created with the patch and is merged to 'next',
|
|
and cooked further and eventually graduates to 'master'.
|
|
|
|
In any time between the (2)-(3) cycle, the maintainer may pick it up
|
|
from the list and queue it to 'pu', in order to make it easier for
|
|
people play with it without having to pick up and apply the patch to
|
|
their trees themselves.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------
|
|
Know the status of your patch after submission
|
|
|
|
* You can use Git itself to find out when your patch is merged in
|
|
master. 'git pull --rebase' will automatically skip already-applied
|
|
patches, and will let you know. This works only if you rebase on top
|
|
of the branch in which your patch has been merged (i.e. it will not
|
|
tell you if your patch is merged in pu if you rebase on top of
|
|
master).
|
|
|
|
* Read the Git mailing list, the maintainer regularly posts messages
|
|
entitled "What's cooking in git.git" and "What's in git.git" giving
|
|
the status of various proposed changes.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------
|
|
MUA specific hints
|
|
|
|
Some of patches I receive or pick up from the list share common
|
|
patterns of breakage. Please make sure your MUA is set up
|
|
properly not to corrupt whitespaces.
|
|
|
|
See the DISCUSSION section of git-format-patch(1) for hints on
|
|
checking your patch by mailing it to yourself and applying with
|
|
git-am(1).
|
|
|
|
While you are at it, check the resulting commit log message from
|
|
a trial run of applying the patch. If what is in the resulting
|
|
commit is not exactly what you would want to see, it is very
|
|
likely that your maintainer would end up hand editing the log
|
|
message when he applies your patch. Things like "Hi, this is my
|
|
first patch.\n", if you really want to put in the patch e-mail,
|
|
should come after the three-dash line that signals the end of the
|
|
commit message.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pine
|
|
----
|
|
|
|
(Johannes Schindelin)
|
|
|
|
I don't know how many people still use pine, but for those poor
|
|
souls it may be good to mention that the quell-flowed-text is
|
|
needed for recent versions.
|
|
|
|
... the "no-strip-whitespace-before-send" option, too. AFAIK it
|
|
was introduced in 4.60.
|
|
|
|
(Linus Torvalds)
|
|
|
|
And 4.58 needs at least this.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
diff-tree 8326dd8350be64ac7fc805f6563a1d61ad10d32c (from e886a61f76edf5410573e92e38ce22974f9c40f1)
|
|
Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>
|
|
Date: Mon Aug 15 17:23:51 2005 -0700
|
|
|
|
Fix pine whitespace-corruption bug
|
|
|
|
There's no excuse for unconditionally removing whitespace from
|
|
the pico buffers on close.
|
|
|
|
diff --git a/pico/pico.c b/pico/pico.c
|
|
--- a/pico/pico.c
|
|
+++ b/pico/pico.c
|
|
@@ -219,7 +219,9 @@ PICO *pm;
|
|
switch(pico_all_done){ /* prepare for/handle final events */
|
|
case COMP_EXIT : /* already confirmed */
|
|
packheader();
|
|
+#if 0
|
|
stripwhitespace();
|
|
+#endif
|
|
c |= COMP_EXIT;
|
|
break;
|
|
|
|
|
|
(Daniel Barkalow)
|
|
|
|
> A patch to SubmittingPatches, MUA specific help section for
|
|
> users of Pine 4.63 would be very much appreciated.
|
|
|
|
Ah, it looks like a recent version changed the default behavior to do the
|
|
right thing, and inverted the sense of the configuration option. (Either
|
|
that or Gentoo did it.) So you need to set the
|
|
"no-strip-whitespace-before-send" option, unless the option you have is
|
|
"strip-whitespace-before-send", in which case you should avoid checking
|
|
it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thunderbird, KMail, GMail
|
|
-------------------------
|
|
|
|
See the MUA-SPECIFIC HINTS section of git-format-patch(1).
|
|
|
|
Gnus
|
|
----
|
|
|
|
'|' in the *Summary* buffer can be used to pipe the current
|
|
message to an external program, and this is a handy way to drive
|
|
"git am". However, if the message is MIME encoded, what is
|
|
piped into the program is the representation you see in your
|
|
*Article* buffer after unwrapping MIME. This is often not what
|
|
you would want for two reasons. It tends to screw up non ASCII
|
|
characters (most notably in people's names), and also
|
|
whitespaces (fatal in patches). Running 'C-u g' to display the
|
|
message in raw form before using '|' to run the pipe can work
|
|
this problem around.
|