Part of the maintainer's job is to keep up-to-date and publish the 'amlog' which stores a mapping between a patch's 'Message-Id' e-mail header and the commit generated by applying said patch. But our Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt does not mention the amlog, or the scripts which exist to help the maintainer keep the amlog up-to-date. (This bit me during the first integration round I did as interim maintainer[1] involved a lot of manual clean-up. More recently it has come up as part of a research effort to better understand a patch's lifecycle on the list[2].) Address this gap by briefly documenting the existence and purpose of the 'post-applypatch' hook in maintaining the amlog entries. [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/Y19dnb2M+yObnftj@nand.local/ [2]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAJoAoZ=4ARuH3aHGe5yC_Xcnou_c396q_ZienYPY7YnEzZcyEg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ Suggested-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <me@xxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Similar to v1, but with: - an added change to "The Policy" section written by Junio - a tab/space fix in the notes.rewriteRef example - and a mention of the fact that the notes.rewriteRef configuration is not read by 'cherry-pick'. Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 25 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt b/Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt index da31332f11..76d6688d4c 100644 --- a/Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt +++ b/Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt @@ -122,6 +122,13 @@ Note that before v1.9.0 release, the version numbers used to be structured slightly differently. vX.Y.Z were feature releases while vX.Y.Z.W were maintenance releases for vX.Y.Z. +Because most of the lines of code in Git are written by individual +contributors, and contributions come in the form of e-mailed patches +published on the mailing list, the project maintains a mapping from +individual commits to the Message-Id of the e-mail that resulted in +the commit, to help tracking the origin of the changes. The notes +in "refs/notes/amlog" are used for this purpose, and are published +along with the broken-out branches to the maintainer's repository. A Typical Git Day ----------------- @@ -165,6 +172,24 @@ by doing the following: In practice, almost no patch directly goes to 'master' or 'maint'. + The maintainer is expected to update refs/notes/amlog with a + mapping between the applied commit and the 'Message-Id' + corresponding to the e-mail which carried the patch. + + This mapping is created with the aid of the "post-applypatch" hook + found in the 'todo' branch. That hook should be installed before + applying patches. It is also helpful to carry forward any relevant + amlog entries when rebasing, so the following config may be useful: + + [notes] + rewriteRef = refs/notes/amlog + + (note that this configuration is not read by 'cherry-pick'). + + Finally, take care that the amlog entries are pushed out during + integration cycles since external tools and contributors (in + addition to internal scripts) may rely on them. + - Review the last issue of "What's cooking" message, review the topics ready for merging (topic->master and topic->maint). Use "Meta/cook -w" script (where Meta/ contains a checkout of the Range-diff against v1: 1: a4b1da93e1 ! 1: 5cc8e2bcb8 Documentation: mention the amlog in howto/maintain-git.txt @@ Commit message [2]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAJoAoZ=4ARuH3aHGe5yC_Xcnou_c396q_ZienYPY7YnEzZcyEg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ Suggested-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> + Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Taylor Blau <me@xxxxxxxxxxxx> ## Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt ## +@@ Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt: Note that before v1.9.0 release, the version numbers used to be + structured slightly differently. vX.Y.Z were feature releases while + vX.Y.Z.W were maintenance releases for vX.Y.Z. + ++Because most of the lines of code in Git are written by individual ++contributors, and contributions come in the form of e-mailed patches ++published on the mailing list, the project maintains a mapping from ++individual commits to the Message-Id of the e-mail that resulted in ++the commit, to help tracking the origin of the changes. The notes ++in "refs/notes/amlog" are used for this purpose, and are published ++along with the broken-out branches to the maintainer's repository. + + A Typical Git Day + ----------------- @@ Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt: by doing the following: In practice, almost no patch directly goes to 'master' or 'maint'. @@ Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt: by doing the following: + amlog entries when rebasing, so the following config may be useful: + + [notes] -+ rewriteref = refs/notes/amlog ++ rewriteRef = refs/notes/amlog ++ ++ (note that this configuration is not read by 'cherry-pick'). + + Finally, take care that the amlog entries are pushed out during + integration cycles since external tools and contributors (in base-commit: 3857aae53f3633b7de63ad640737c657387ae0c6 -- 2.47.0.rc0.4.gd73fb26592.dirty
