I somehow missed that SUBMITTING_PATCHES referenced the older "send to git mailing list by email" patch process we used for the first few years of the JGit project's life. Now that we are hosted under the Eclipse Foundation umbrella we need to follow their IP process for all contributions. Change-Id: Ia29b31746826ca5b914e0a1d108c2166ff64d268 Signed-off-by: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>

14 years ago · f4964358b3
--- a/SUBMITTING_PATCHES
+++ b/SUBMITTING_PATCHES
@@ -20,8 +20,8 @@ so I started with the one found in the core Git distribution
 (Documentation/SubmittingPatches), which itself was based on the
 patch submission guidelines for the Linux kernel.

 However there are some differences, so please review and familiarize
 yourself with the following relevant bits:
 However there are quite a few differences, so please review and
 familiarize yourself with the following relevant bits:


 (1) Make separate commits for logically separate changes.
@@ -58,70 +58,12 @@ patch after generating it, to ensure accuracy.  Before sending out,
 please make sure it cleanly applies to the "master" branch head.


 (3) Sending your patches.
 (3) Check the license.

 People on the git mailing list need to be able to read and comment
 on the changes you are submitting.  It is important for a developer
 to be able to "quote" your changes, using standard e-mail tools, so
 that they may comment on specific portions of your code.  For this
 reason, all patches should be submitted "inline".  WARNING: Be wary
 of your MUAs word-wrap corrupting your patch.  Do not cut-n-paste
 your patch; you can lose tabs that way if you are not careful.
 JGit is licensed under the Eclipse Development License (EDL),
 which is a renamed version of the new style/3-clause BSD license.

 It is a common convention to prefix your subject line with [PATCH].
 This lets people easily distinguish patches from other e-mail
 discussions.

 "git format-patch" command follows the best current practice to
 format the body of an e-mail message.  At the beginning of the patch
 should come your commit message, ending with the Signed-off-by:
 lines, and a line that consists of three dashes, followed by the
 diffstat information and the patch itself.  If you are forwarding a
 patch from somebody else, optionally, at the beginning of the e-mail
 message just before the commit message starts, you can put a "From:
 " line to name that person.

 You often want to add additional explanation about the patch,
 other than the commit message itself.  Place such "cover letter"
 material between the three dash lines and the diffstat.

 Do not attach the patch as a MIME attachment, compressed or not.
 Do not let your e-mail client send quoted-printable.  Do not let your
 e-mail client send format=flowed which would destroy whitespaces
 in your patches. Many popular e-mail applications will not always
 transmit a MIME attachment as plain text, making it impossible to
 comment on your code.  A MIME attachment also takes a bit more
 time to process.  This does not decrease the likelihood of your
 MIME-attached change being accepted, but it makes it more likely
 that it will be postponed.

 Exception:  If your mailer is mangling patches then someone may ask
 you to re-send them using MIME, that is OK.

 Do not PGP sign your patch, at least for now.  Most likely, your
 maintainer or other people on the list would not have your PGP
 key and would not bother obtaining it anyway.  Your patch is not
 judged by who you are; a good patch from an unknown origin has a
 far better chance of being accepted than a patch from a known,
 respected origin that is done poorly or does incorrect things.

 If you really really really really want to do a PGP signed
 patch, format it as "multipart/signed", not a text/plain message
 that starts with '-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----'.  That is
 not a text/plain, it's something else.

 Note that your maintainer does not necessarily read everything
 on the git mailing list.  If your patch is for discussion first,
 send it "To:" the mailing list, and optionally "cc:" him.  If it
 is trivially correct or after the list reached a consensus, send it
 "To:" the maintainer and optionally "cc:" the list.


 (4) Check the license

 JGit is licensed under the 3-clause (new-style) BSD.

 Because of this licensing model *every* file within the project
 Under this licensing model *every* file within the project
 *must* list which license covers it in the header of the file.
 Any new contributions to an existing file *must* be submitted under
 the current license of that file.  Any new files *must* clearly
@@ -133,225 +75,31 @@ your patch.  It is virtually impossible to remove a patch once it
 has been applied and pushed out.


 (5) Sign your work

 To improve tracking of who did what, we've borrowed the "sign-off"
 procedure from the Linux kernel project on patches that are being
 emailed around.  Although JGit is a lot smaller project it is
 a good discipline to follow it.

 The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for the
 patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right
 to pass it on as a open-source patch.  The rules are pretty simple:
 if you can certify the below:

        Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

        By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

        (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me
            and I have the right to submit it under the open source
            license indicated in the file; or

        (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the
            best of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate
            open source license and I have the right under that
            license to submit that work with modifications, whether
            created in whole or in part by me, under the same open
            source license (unless I am permitted to submit under
            a different license), as indicated in the file; or

        (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some
            other person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have
            not modified it.

        (d) I understand and agree that this project and the
            contribution are public and that a record of the
            contribution (including all personal information I
            submit with it, including my sign-off) is maintained
            indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
            this project or the open source license(s) involved.

 then you just add a line saying

    Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>

 This line can be automatically added by git if you run the git-commit
 command with the -s option.

 Some people also put extra tags at the end.  They'll just be ignored
 for now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures
 or just point out some special detail about the sign-off.


 ------------------------------------------------
 MUA specific hints

 Some of patches I receive or pick up from the list share common
 patterns of breakage.  Please make sure your MUA is set up
 properly not to corrupt whitespaces.  Here are two common ones
 I have seen:

 * Empty context lines that do not have _any_ whitespace.

 * Non empty context lines that have one extra whitespace at the
  beginning.

 One test you could do yourself if your MUA is set up correctly is:

 * Send the patch to yourself, exactly the way you would, except
  To: and Cc: lines, which would not contain the list and
  maintainer address.

 * Save that patch to a file in UNIX mailbox format.  Call it say
  a.patch.
 (4) Review the Eclipse Due Diligence Process.

 * Try to apply to the tip of the "master" branch from the
  egit.git public repository:
  http://www.eclipse.org/legal/EclipseLegalProcessPoster.pdf

    $ git fetch git://repo.or.cz/egit.git master:test-apply
    $ git checkout test-apply
    $ git reset --hard
    $ git am a.patch

 If it does not apply correctly, there can be various reasons.
 (5) Sending your patches.

 * Your patch itself does not apply cleanly.  That is _bad_ but
  does not have much to do with your MUA.  Please rebase the
  patch appropriately.

 * Your MUA corrupted your patch; applymbox would complain that
  the patch does not apply.  Look at .dotest/ subdirectory and
  see what 'patch' file contains and check for the common
  corruption patterns mentioned above.

 * While you are at it, check what are in 'info' and
  'final-commit' files as well.  If what is in 'final-commit' is
  not exactly what you would want to see in the commit log
  message, it is very likely that your maintainer would end up
  hand editing the log message when he applies your patch.
  Things like "Hi, this is my first patch.\n", if you really
  want to put in the patch e-mail, should come after the
  three-dash line that signals the end of the commit message.


 Pine
 ----

 (Johannes Schindelin)

 I don't know how many people still use pine, but for those poor
 souls it may be good to mention that the quell-flowed-text is
 needed for recent versions.

 ... the "no-strip-whitespace-before-send" option, too. AFAIK it
 was introduced in 4.60.

 (Linus Torvalds)

 And 4.58 needs at least this.

 ---
 diff-tree 8326dd8350be64ac7fc805f6563a1d61ad10d32c (from e886a61f76edf5410573e92e38ce22974f9c40f1)
 Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>
 Date:   Mon Aug 15 17:23:51 2005 -0700

    Fix pine whitespace-corruption bug

    There's no excuse for unconditionally removing whitespace from
    the pico buffers on close.

 diff --git a/pico/pico.c b/pico/pico.c
 --- a/pico/pico.c
 +++ b/pico/pico.c
@@ -219,7 +219,9 @@ PICO *pm;
 	    switch(pico_all_done){	/* prepare for/handle final events */
 	      case COMP_EXIT :		/* already confirmed */
 		packheader();
 +#if 0
 		stripwhitespace();
 +#endif
 		c |= COMP_EXIT;
 		break;
 

 (Daniel Barkalow)

 > A patch to SubmittingPatches, MUA specific help section for
 > users of Pine 4.63 would be very much appreciated.

 Ah, it looks like a recent version changed the default behavior to do the
 right thing, and inverted the sense of the configuration option. (Either
 that or Gentoo did it.) So you need to set the
 "no-strip-whitespace-before-send" option, unless the option you have is
 "strip-whitespace-before-send", in which case you should avoid checking
 it.


 Thunderbird
 -----------

 (A Large Angry SCM)

 Here are some hints on how to successfully submit patches inline using
 Thunderbird.

 This recipe appears to work with the current [*1*] Thunderbird from Suse.

 The following Thunderbird extensions are needed:
 	AboutConfig 0.5
 		http://aboutconfig.mozdev.org/
 	External Editor 0.7.2
 		http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=8

 1) Prepare the patch as a text file using your method of choice.

 2) Before opening a compose window, use Edit->Account Settings to
 uncheck the "Compose messages in HTML format" setting in the
 "Composition & Addressing" panel of the account to be used to send the
 patch. [*2*]

 3) In the main Thunderbird window, _before_ you open the compose window
 for the patch, use Tools->about:config to set the following to the
 indicated values:
 	mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed	=> false
 	mailnews.wraplength		=> 0

 4) Open a compose window and click the external editor icon.

 5) In the external editor window, read in the patch file and exit the
 editor normally.

 6) Back in the compose window: Add whatever other text you wish to the
 message, complete the addressing and subject fields, and press send.

 7) Optionally, undo the about:config/account settings changes made in
 steps 2 & 3.


 [Footnotes]
 *1* Version 1.0 (20041207) from the MozillaThunderbird-1.0-5 rpm of Suse
 9.3 professional updates.
 "git format-patch" command follows the best current practice to
 format a commit as a reviewable text message.

 *2* It may be possible to do this with about:config and the following
 settings but I haven't tried, yet.
 	mail.html_compose			=> false
 	mail.identity.default.compose_html	=> false
 	mail.identity.id?.compose_html		=> false
 At the beginning of the patch should come your commit message,
 a line that consists of three dashes, followed by the diffstat
 information and the patch itself.  If you are forwarding a patch
 from somebody else, optionally, at the beginning of the e-mail
 message just before the commit message starts, you can put a "From:
 " line to name that person.

 You often want to add additional explanation about the patch,
 other than the commit message itself.  Place such "cover letter"
 material between the three dash lines and the diffstat, or please
 place it in the bug description itself.

 Open a new bug on the Eclipse bug tracker on the EGit project:

 Gnus
 ----
  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/enter_bug.cgi?product=EGit

 '|' in the *Summary* buffer can be used to pipe the current
 message to an external program, and this is a handy way to drive
 "git am".  However, if the message is MIME encoded, what is
 piped into the program is the representation you see in your
 *Article* buffer after unwrapping MIME.  This is often not what
 you would want for two reasons.  It tends to screw up non ASCII
 characters (most notably in people's names), and also
 whitespaces (fatal in patches).  Running 'C-u g' to display the
 message in raw form before using '|' to run the pipe can work
 this problem around.
 Attach the mailbox file(s) created by "git format-patch" to the bug.