Adding lkml and linux-doc mailing lists... On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 10:11:55AM +1100, Tobin C. Harding wrote:
Hi Greg,
This is totally asking a favour, feel free to ignore. How do you format your [GIT PULL] emails to Linus? Do you create a tag and then run a git command to get the email?
I tried to do it manually and failed pretty hard (as you no doubt will notice on LKML).
Well, I think you got it right the third time, so nice job :) Anyway, this actually came up at the kernel summit / maintainer meeting a few weeks ago, in that "how do I make a good pull request to Linus" is something we need to document. Here's what I do, and it seems to work well, so maybe we should turn it into the start of the documentation for how to do it. ----------- To start with, put your changes on a branch, hopefully one named in a semi-useful way (I use 'char-misc-next' for my char/misc driver patches to be merged into linux-next). That is the branch you wish to tag and have Linus pull from. Name the tag with something useful that you can understand if you run across it in a few weeks, and something that will be "unique". Continuing the example of my char-misc tree, for the patches to be sent to Linus for the 4.15-rc1 merge window, I would name the tag 'char-misc-4.15-rc1': git tag -u KEY_ID -s char-misc-4.15-rc1 char-misc-next that will create a signed tag called 'char-misc-4.15-rc1' based on the last commit in the char-misc-next branch, and sign it with my gpg key KEY_ID (replace KEY_ID with your own gpg key id.) When you run the above command, git will drop you into an editor and ask you to describe the tag. In this case, you are describing a pull request, so outline what is contained here, why it should be merged, and what, if any, testing has happened to it. All of this information will end up in the tag itself, and then in the merge commit that Linus makes, so write it up well, as it will be in the kernel tree for forever. An example pull request of mine might look like: Char/Misc patches for 4.15-rc1 Here is the big char/misc patch set for the 4.15-rc1 merge window. Contained in here is the normal set of new functions added to all of these crazy drivers, as well as the following brand new subsystems: - time_travel_controller: Finally a set of drivers for the latest time travel bus architecture that provides i/o to the CPU before it asked for it, allowing uninterrupted processing - relativity_shifters: due to the affect that the time_travel_controllers have on the overall system, there was a need for a new set of relativity shifter drivers to accommodate the newly formed black holes that would threaten to suck CPUs into them. This subsystem handles this in a way to successfully neutralize the problems. There is a Kconfig option to force these to be enabled when needed, so problems should not occur. All of these patches have been successfully tested in the latest linux-next releases, and the original problems that it found have all been resolved (apologies to anyone living near Canberra for the lack of the Kconfig options in the earlier versions of the linux-next tree creations.) Signed-off-by: Your-name-here <your_email@domain> The tag message format is just like a git commit id. One line at the top for a "summary subject" and be sure to sign-off at the bottom. Now that you have a local signed tag, you need to push it up to where it can be retrieved by others: git push origin char-misc-4.15-rc1 pushes the char-misc-4.15-rc1 tag to where the 'origin' repo is located. The last thing to do is create the pull request message. Git handily will do this for you with the 'git request-pull' command, but it needs a bit of help determining what you want to pull, and what to base the pull against (to show the correct changes to be pulled and the diffstat.) I use the following command to generate a pull request: git request-pull master git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/char-misc.git/ char-misc-4.15-rc1 This is asking git to compare the difference from the 'char-misc-4.15-rc1' tag location, to the head of the 'master' branch (which in my case points to the last location in Linus's tree that I diverged from, usually a -rc release) and to use the git:// protocol to pull from. If you wish to use https://, that can be used here instead as well (but note that some people behind firewalls will have problems with https git pulls). If the char-misc-4.15-rc1 tag is not present in the repo that I am asking to be pulled from, git will complain saying it is not there, a handy way to remember to actually push it to a public location. The output of 'git request-pull' will contain the location of the git tree and specific tag to pull from, and the full text description of that tag (which is why you need to provide good information in that tag.) It will also create a diffstat of the pull request, and a shortlog of the individual commits that the pull request will provide. ----------- Does all of that make sense? Anything I can explain better? It's just 3 commands to do to create the tag, push it out, and create a pull request text to put in an email. I have a simple script that I use for this task to output to my console these 3 commands, based on what kernel tree I am currently in, and what branch I am on. You can find that script at: https://github.com/gregkh/gregkh-linux/blob/master/work/pull_request if you wish to laugh at my horrid perl skills :) Hope this helps, greg k-h