Re: Replacing Link trailers

[Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>]

On 2025-10-13 07:53, James Bottomley wrote:
> There has been a lot of discussion on the tooling list about how the
> loss of link trailers has updated both tooling and triaging issues.
> Konstantin has proposed a tool to get around this, but while that's in
> development, I propose a discussion about making Link (or some
> alternative tag) into the pointer that would work for everyone.

AFAIU. this use of Link trailer is used as a strategy to work around
the lack of unique identifier in patch commit messages that identifies
multiple revisions of a patch, for tracking by patch review tooling
and facilitate digging through patch history.

I think it's important to spell out the problem this is trying to
solve from the get go.

Based on prior email discussions I've seen, I don't think Linus is
convinced that tagging commits with a unique identifier brings value,
whereas people actively developing and using tools based on a
workflow that relies on patch revision tracking see a lot of value
in this.

Putting this in context may help listing the possible solutions that
go beyond links and evaluate the best solution. For instance, gerrit
uses change id tags such as:

Change-Id: I9bfbee7a3219c3f293cee2bafce7233ec34d3e84

to track the various revisions of a patch. Unlike "Link" tags, it is
clear that it's only meant to be a unique identifier for the various
revisions of a patch, and it's not meant to be used as a link.

AFAIU the use of "Link" tags for that purpose tried to achieve a
similar goal, but ends up polluting the information seen by humans,
which is an unwanted side-effect.

It's great to hear that Konstantin is working on this. I look forward
to see what comes out of it.

Thanks,

Mathieu

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
EfficiOS Inc.
https://www.efficios.com