Workflow improvements when sending patches with format-patch && send-email ?

[Bjørn Mork]

Matthias Beyer <mail at beyermatthias.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I have a problem related to my workflow when patching kernel sources.
> What I do by now, when sending patches:
>
>     scripts/get_maintainer.pl --file my/patched/file.c
>
>     git format-patch -s -n --cover-letter
>     # and then appending _every single mail from the get_maintainer.pl
>     # call with either --to or --cc
>     # and the commit range

You don't really need to append the addresses in this step. Using --to
and --cc with "git send-email" is sufficient.

>     git send-email --no-chain-reply-to
>     # and then appending _every single mail from the get_maintainer.pl
>     # call with either --to or --cc
>     ./00*
>
> The second step is mainly copy-paste from the format-patch call, but I
> guess you already notice my issue: I have to "hand-copy" every email
> address from the get_maintainer.pl call.
>
> I also send my patches to two persons which do not get listed from the
> get_maintainer.pl call most of the time, plus I do not send my patches
> to the LKML directly (but the driverdev ML).
>
> I consider this hard work, especially when having a lot of _small_
> patchsets, as I do this for every single patchset and it really annoys
> me.
>
> Are there tools somewhere to simplify these steps? Something like
>
>     "generate & send patches from bla-blubb...foobazbar"
>
> and then it:
>
>     1) Gets mailaddrs from get_maintainer.pl
>     2) lets me add additional and delete receivers
>     3) asks me which one gets a --to and which one a --cc
>     4) generates the patches with format-patch
>     5) (optionally) runs checkpatch.pl on it
>     6) sends the patches with send-email after confirmation

I don't think we want to automate the last step. Kernel coders are fast
learners and "confirmation" is quickly turned into automatically
pressing 'y' without thinking...

> Are there some tools out there? Or how do you guys do this? Or are
> there tweaks built-in in git that I don't know yet?

I have wondered about the same thing wrt get_maintainer.pl and git
send-email. You can of course script this somewhere else, but it seems
to me that a new switch to get_maintainer.pl creating a suitable would
be useful?

(Note that the copy/paste can be made easier by using the existing
switches: 
 scripts/get_maintainer.pl --nomultiline --separator ", --cc=" --file my/patched/file.c
but this can still be improved a lot)


Bjørn