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From: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>,
	"Randy.Dunlap" <rdunlap@xenotime.net>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Pete Zaitcev <zaitcev@redhat.com>,
	Coywolf Qi Hunt <coywolf@gmail.com>, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>,
	Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Subject: [PATCH] Document patch subject line better
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 00:29:10 -0700 (PDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20051003072910.14726.10100.sendpatchset@jackhammer.engr.sgi.com> (raw)

Improve explanation of the Subject line fields in
Documentation/SubmittingPatches Canonical Patch Format.

Signed-off-by: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>

Index: 2.6.14-rc2-mm2/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
===================================================================
--- 2.6.14-rc2-mm2.orig/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
+++ 2.6.14-rc2-mm2/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
@@ -305,7 +305,7 @@ point out some special detail about the 
 
 The canonical patch subject line is:
 
-    Subject: [PATCH 001/123] [<area>:] <explanation>
+    Subject: [PATCH 001/123] subsystem: summary phrase
 
 The canonical patch message body contains the following:
 
@@ -330,9 +330,25 @@ alphabetically by subject line - pretty 
 support that - since because the sequence number is zero-padded,
 the numerical and alphabetic sort is the same.
 
-See further details on how to phrase the "<explanation>" in the
-"Subject:" line in Andrew Morton's "The perfect patch", referenced
-below.
+The "subsystem" in the email's Subject should identify which
+area or subsystem of the kernel is being patched.
+
+The "summary phrase" in the email's Subject should concisely
+describe the patch which that email contains.  The "summary
+phrase" should not be a filename.  Do not use the same "summary
+phrase" for every patch in a whole patch series.
+
+Bear in mind that the "summary phrase" of your email becomes
+a globally-unique identifier for that patch.  It propagates
+all the way into the git changelog.  The "summary phrase" may
+later be used in developer discussions which refer to the patch.
+People will want to google for the "summary phrase" to read
+discussion regarding that patch.
+
+A couple of example Subjects:
+
+    Subject: [patch 2/5] ext2: improve scalability of bitmap searching
+    Subject: [PATCHv2 001/207] x86: fix eflags tracking
 
 The "from" line must be the very first line in the message body,
 and has the form:

-- 
                          I won't rest till it's the best ...
                          Programmer, Linux Scalability
                          Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com> 1.650.933.1373

             reply	other threads:[~2005-10-03  7:29 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2005-10-03  7:29 Paul Jackson [this message]
2005-10-03  8:12 ` Peter Zijlstra
2005-10-03  8:42   ` Paul Jackson
2005-10-03  9:22     ` Peter Zijlstra
2005-10-03 15:06 ` Linus Torvalds
2005-10-03 15:54   ` Paul Jackson
2005-10-03 16:04     ` Greg KH
2005-10-03 21:02       ` Jean Delvare
2005-10-03 21:22         ` Greg KH
2005-10-04  3:12           ` Paul Jackson
2005-10-04  0:54         ` Paul Jackson
2005-10-03 20:40     ` Jean Delvare
2005-10-03 20:45       ` Greg KH

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