Cover Letter of Patchsets

[Leo Liang]

Dear Wolfgang,

On Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 08:03:46PM +0800, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Leo,
> 
> In message <20200706023510.GB2522 at andestech.com> you wrote:
> >
> > I am Leo, just recently joined the community.
> > and been picking up the guide line of uboot's development.
> >
> > I am a bit curious about the policy on the cover letter of patchsets.
> > Is cover letter mandatory ?
> 
> No, it is not really mandatoryh, but strongl recommended for patch
> series.
> 
> > IMHO, making it mandatory, especially on patchsets that consist of
> > more than 1 patch, is more than useful and of great advantages.
> 
> For single patches a cover letter usually makes little sense.
> 
> > 1. Making patches clearer for peer and maintainer review
> ...
> > 2. Helping the author better organize the patchset
> ...
> > In all, I think it would be nice to write cover letter to introduce the work.
> 
> All your arguments make a lot of sense, indeed.
> 
> > If I miss anything or misunderstand anything please let me know, thanks in advance.
> 
> Please keep in mind that an inherent property of the cover letter is
> that it is NOT part of the patches itself, i. e. it helps only
> during the review process, but not any time later when someone tries
> to understand the code from reading the git commit logs.
> 
> 
> So the essential information to understand the purpose and the
> implementation (and ideally also how it has been tested / can be
> tested) should always be part of the commit messages itself.
> 
> THe cover letter can summarize such information and provide the
> overview information for a patch series.  Also it should commet on
> the changes between versions of the patch series, if these are
> needed (especially when major rework is done between submissions).
> 
> But it is only supplementary information which gets lost when the
> patches are pulled into the git repository.
> 

Understood!
Thank you very much for the clarification.

Best regards,
Leo