> > On Tue, 2018-03-06 at 14:59 -0700, Jason Gunthorpe wrote: > > On Tue, Mar 06, 2018 at 01:36:36PM -0500, Mimi Zohar wrote: > > > On Tue, 2018-03-06 at 08:32 -0800, James Bottomley wrote: > > > > On Tue, 2018-03-06 at 08:06 +0000, Winkler, Tomas wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Mon, Mar 05, 2018 at 01:09:09PM +0000, Winkler, Tomas wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Why you need cover letter? What are u missing in the patch > > > > > > > description > > > > > > > > > > > > If you submit a *patch set* I *require* a cover letter, yes. > > > > > > > > > > It's good but it is not must, you are inventing your own rules. > > > > > > > > As long as the Maintainer is the gatekeeper, you're not going to > > > > get very far with this argument. The fact is that a lot of > > > > subsystems have varying rules; often undocumented, some of which > > > > are even in conflict, like alphabetic vs reverse christmas tree format for > includes. > > > > > > > > A cover letter is actually one of the more uniform rules. It's > > > > referred to in submitting patches, but not actually documented there. > > > > > > I've heard that some maintainers are moving away from cover letters, > > > since they are not include in the git repo and are lost. I've seen > > > Andrew Morton cut and paste the cover letter in the first patch > > > description of the patch set. > > > > Andrew has a workflow unlike any other I've seen.. > > Andrew is the only one that actually cut and pasted the cover letter in the > first patch description, but I've heard this from others. > > > In my view the cover letter should explain why the maintainer should > > apply the series, and give any guidance to the review process. > > > Not duplicate information that belongs in the patch comments. It > > shouldn't explain how/why the patch(es) works, etc. > > Patch descriptions should never explain how/why a particular patch > works. If it is that difficult to understand, then something is wrong with the > patch. The individual patch descriptions should provide the current status, > the motivation for the change, and short summary of the change (eg. new > features, configs, etc). > > The cover letter is needed for (larger) patch sets in order to explain the > overall motivation, instead of having to guess where the patch set is going. I > wouldn't expect to see a cover letter for a single bug fix or two. > > Mimi I second that. Tomas.
