Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Patch version changes in commit logs?

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

On Mon, 2019-07-01 at 19:54 +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Jul 2019, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Mon, 2019-07-01 at 17:40 +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > > On Mon, 1 Jul 2019, David Howells wrote:
> > > > I put the changelog in the cover note (ie. patch 0) since if
> > > > there's more than one patch there may well be changes that span
> > > > multiple patches.  Whoever's
> > > 
> > > That's a pain. I'd have to go back and forth to find that
> > > information. If the v$N info is in the patch itself, then it
> > > clearly shows what the scope of the change is in that particular
> > > patch, e.g. just fixing up the typo or some structural change.
> > > 
> > > And no, this is not about convenience for the submitter. It's
> > > about convenience for the reviewer/maintainer. The goal must be
> > > to make their life as simple as possible not the other way round.
> > 
> > Wouldn't the contemporaneous reviewer/maintainer be on the actual
> > email threads ... so they wouldn't need the references?
> > 
> > I see the Link tag as a useful historical artifact but you seem to
> > think it's an essential part of the contemporaneous
> > acceptance.  I've
> 
> That's not what I was talking about. This was about a per patch
> change history vs. putting all changes fron the previous version into
> the cover letter.
> 
> i.e.
> 
> 	cover letter
> 
> 	V2 -> V3:
> 	      - list of changes
> 
> vs.
> 
> 	cover letter
> 
> 	V2 -> V3:
> 	   High level overview of changes
> 
>   and
> 	patch b/m
> 
> 	SOB
> 	---
> 	V3: Fixup up typo
> 
> 	patch d/m
> 
> 	SOB
> 	---
> 	V3: New algorithm
> 
> 	patch f/m
> 
> 	SOB
> 	---
> 	V2: Fix comment style
> 
> 
> So on review I can (if I trust the submitter) just skip 'b' and 'f'
> because 'b' has no interesting change (i.e. the typo which made the
> compile fail is fixed) and 'f' has no change at all. Instead I focus
> on 'd' because there is the meat of the V3 submission.
> 
> Having all this information only in the cover letter is a pain
> especially on larger patch series.
> 
> The link to V2 is in both cases in the cover letter. That's
> sufficient. Yes, it might not be necessary, but I just recently ended
> up wasting an hour finding an earlier version because the cover
> letter subject changed slightly. I surely have better things to do.

I'm not arguing against changelogs in the patches themselves as long as
they're below the commit message --- cutoff.  In fact I think that's
best practice for reviewers.  I'm just arguing making a link tag
mandatory would impose an enforcement burden on a lot of subsystems
which would provide no benefit to them), so I don't mind it's being
optional but it shouldn't be mandatory.

James