Here is a note to explain various sections and what the readers on this list are expected to read from them in the periodic "What's cooking" summary. This probably should be integrated in the periodic "A note from the maintainer" posting eventually. The first part is mostly a boilerplate message, but the second paragraph of it often explains where in the development cycle we are. The last one (issue #4 of this month) said: Trivially correct fixes to old bugs may still graduate to 'master', but otherwise we are mostly in "regression fixes only" mode until 1.7.10 final (see http://tinyurl.com/gitCal for schedule). The preamble is followed by various sections, each listing topics in different "doneness". Each topic looks like this: * cn/pull-rebase-message (2012-03-04) 1 commit (merged to 'next' on 2012-03-04 at 5a6cd58) + Make git-{pull,rebase} message without tracking information friendlier The advise message given when the user didn't give enough clue on what to merge was overly long. Will merge to 'master'. A line that begins with a '*' has the name of a topic, the date of the last activity on the topic and the number of changes in the topic. Then each commit on the topic is listed with prefix ("+", "-" or "."). The ones with "+" are already on 'next', and the dates when they were merged to 'next' also appear on this list. This will give readers the rough idea of how long the topic has been cooking in 'next' (the branch active bug hunters and early adopters are expected to be running) to measure the "doneness". The list of commits on the topic is often followed by a few lines of free-form text to summarize what the topic aims to achieve. This often goes literally to the draft release notes when the topic graduates to 'master'. Also I annotate my short-term plan for the topic ("Will merge to 'master' in the above example); it is very much appreciated if readers raise timely objections to this plan (e.g. "Don't merge it yet, it is broken --- see that discussion thread"). The [New topics] section lists topics that were not in my tree when the previous issue of "What's cooking" was sent. The [Graduated to "master"] section lists topics that have been merged to 'master' since the previous issue. Even if you are not an active bug hunter, please exercise the features/fixes these topics brings to the system, as breakages or regressions caused by these will appear in the next release if they are not noticed and fixed. The [Stalled] section lists topics whose discussion has stalled, or re-rolled patches have not been seen for a while after the topic received review comments. This section is listed here so that people interested in the topics in it can help the owners of them to move things forward. The [Cooking] section lists the remainder of the topics. They are making normal progress and are no cause for worries in general. Those whose commits are all in "next" are often just simmering to give time to active bug hunters find unexpected problem in them. those whose commits are not in "next" yet are still going through review/revise cycle until they become ready. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html