Re: contributing to Emacs

[Konstantin Kharlamov]

On Sun, 2023-06-18 at 21:29 +0800, Po Lu wrote:
> Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru> writes:
> 
> > On Sun, 2023-06-18 at 20:09 +0800, Po Lu wrote:
> > > Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru> writes:
> > > 
> > > > Ideally, each commit in the repository should contain minimal functional
> > > > changes. It allows for easier code review at the moment and for better
> > > > figuring
> > > > out why some change was done later in the life of the project. Usually
> > > > at
> > > > this
> > > > point I refer people to this old article from kernel HID subsystem
> > > > maintainer
> > > > and libinput creator
> > > > http://who-t.blogspot.com/2009/12/on-commit-messages.html
> > > > Old — but gold! 😄
> > > 
> > > That's the purpose of ChangeLog, not the VCS.
> > > 
> > > > When project contributions are done via mailing list (such as kernel,
> > > > gdb,
> > > > gcc,
> > > > and in the past were also Xorg and Mesa), you usually turn a number of
> > > > commits
> > > > to separate patches and send them. E.g. here's one example:
> > > > https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/20230612104658.1386996-1-tvrtko.ursulin@linux.intel.com/
> > > > it starts with a "zero patch" that is the title of the series, and then
> > > > individual patches follow.
> > > 
> > > Mesa and Linux are hardly all the world, and that wasn't my experience
> > > with GDB or GCC development.
> > 
> > I am not sure what you mean. Here's GCC ML with patches for the last month
> > https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2023-May/thread.html You can see
> > they
> > send series as well. Here's an arbitrary cover letter "zero patch" for a
> > series
> > https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2023-May/618426.html
> 
> Where is it said that GCC development prefers changes to be submitted in
> this format?

Well, if you want to see the docs, then you can go here
https://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html#patches and you'll see that it starts with
words "Every patch", which implies that you send multiple patches rather than
just one. "Multiple patches" is a series.

Then if you look a bit further, you'll see this paragraph:

> Series identifier
>
> The series identifier is optional and is only relevant if a number of patches
are needed in order to effect an overall change[…]

So yeah, here's an official text about patch series for GCC, as you wanted.