Documentation/SubmittingPatches - jrn/git - Git at Google

 Checklist (and a short version for the impatient):

 	Commits:

 	- make commits of logical units
 	- check for unnecessary whitespace with "git diff --check"
 	  before committing
 	- do not check in commented out code or unneeded files
 	- provide a meaningful commit message
 	- the first line of the commit message should be a short
 	  description and should skip the full stop
 	- if you want your work included in git.git, add a
 	  "Signed-off-by: Your Name <you@example.com>" line to the
 	  commit message (or just use the option "-s" when
 	  committing) to confirm that you agree to the Developer's
 	  Certificate of Origin
 	- make sure that you have tests for the bug you are fixing
 	- make sure that the test suite passes after your commit

 	Patch:

 	- use "git format-patch -M" to create the patch
 	- do not PGP sign your patch
 	- do not attach your patch, but read in the mail
 	  body, unless you cannot teach your mailer to
 	  leave the formatting of the patch alone.
 	- be careful doing cut & paste into your mailer, not to
 	  corrupt whitespaces.
 	- provide additional information (which is unsuitable for
 	  the commit message) between the "---" and the diffstat
 	- if you change, add, or remove a command line option or
 	  make some other user interface change, the associated
 	  documentation should be updated as well.
 	- if your name is not writable in ASCII, make sure that
 	  you send off a message in the correct encoding.
 	- send the patch to the list (git@vger.kernel.org) and the
 	  maintainer (gitster@pobox.com) if (and only if) the patch
 	  is ready for inclusion. If you use git-send-email(1),
 	  please test it first by sending email to yourself.

 Long version:

 I started reading over the SubmittingPatches document for Linux
 kernel, primarily because I wanted to have a document similar to
 it for the core GIT to make sure people understand what they are
 doing when they write "Signed-off-by" line.

 But the patch submission requirements are a lot more relaxed
 here on the technical/contents front, because the core GIT is
 thousand times smaller ;-).  So here is only the relevant bits.


 (1) Make separate commits for logically separate changes.

 Unless your patch is really trivial, you should not be sending
 out a patch that was generated between your working tree and
 your commit head.  Instead, always make a commit with complete
 commit message and generate a series of patches from your
 repository.  It is a good discipline.

 Describe the technical detail of the change(s).

 If your description starts to get too long, that's a sign that you
 probably need to split up your commit to finer grained pieces.

 Oh, another thing.  I am picky about whitespaces.  Make sure your
 changes do not trigger errors with the sample pre-commit hook shipped
 in templates/hooks--pre-commit.  To help ensure this does not happen,
 run git diff --check on your changes before you commit.


 (1a) Try to be nice to older C compilers

 We try to support a wide range of C compilers to compile
 git with. That means that you should not use C99 initializers, even
 if a lot of compilers grok it.

 Also, variables have to be declared at the beginning of the block
 (you can check this with gcc, using the -Wdeclaration-after-statement
 option).

 Another thing: NULL pointers shall be written as NULL, not as 0.


 (2) Generate your patch using git tools out of your commits.

 git based diff tools (git, Cogito, and StGIT included) generate
 unidiff which is the preferred format.

 You do not have to be afraid to use -M option to "git diff" or
 "git format-patch", if your patch involves file renames.  The
 receiving end can handle them just fine.

 Please make sure your patch does not include any extra files
 which do not belong in a patch submission.  Make sure to review
 your patch after generating it, to ensure accuracy.  Before
 sending out, please make sure it cleanly applies to the "master"
 branch head.  If you are preparing a work based on "next" branch,
 that is fine, but please mark it as such.


 (3) Sending your patches.

 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.

 It is a common convention to prefix your subject line with
 [PATCH].  This lets people easily distinguish patches from other
 e-mail discussions.  Use of additional markers after PATCH and
 the closing bracket to mark the nature of the patch is also
 encouraged.  E.g. [PATCH/RFC] is often used when the patch is
 not ready to be applied but it is for discussion, [PATCH v2],
 [PATCH v3] etc. are often seen when you are sending an update to
 what you have previously sent.

 "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 for
 inclusion.

 Also note that your maintainer does not actively involve himself in
 maintaining what are in contrib/ hierarchy.  When you send fixes and
 enhancements to them, do not forget to "cc: " the person who primarily
 worked on that hierarchy in contrib/.


 (4) 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 core GIT 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.

 Notice that you can place your own Signed-off-by: line when
 forwarding somebody else's patch with the above rules for
 D-C-O.  Indeed you are encouraged to do so.  Do not forget to
 place an in-body "From: " line at the beginning to properly attribute
 the change to its true author (see (2) above).

 Also notice that a real name is used in the Signed-off-by: line. Please
 don't hide your real name.

 Some people also put extra tags at the end.

 "Acked-by:" says that the patch was reviewed by the person who
 is more familiar with the issues and the area the patch attempts
 to modify.  "Tested-by:" says the patch was tested by the person
 and found to have the desired effect.

 ------------------------------------------------
 An ideal patch flow

 Here is an ideal patch flow for this project the current maintainer
 suggests to the contributors:

  (0) You come up with an itch.  You code it up.

  (1) Send it to the list and cc people who may need to know about
      the change.

      The people who may need to know are the ones whose code you
      are butchering.  These people happen to be the ones who are
      most likely to be knowledgeable enough to help you, but
      they have no obligation to help you (i.e. you ask for help,
      don't demand).  "git log -p -- $area_you_are_modifying" would
      help you find out who they are.

  (2) You get comments and suggestions for improvements.  You may
      even get them in a "on top of your change" patch form.

  (3) Polish, refine, and re-send to the list and the people who
      spend their time to improve your patch.  Go back to step (2).

  (4) The list forms consensus that the last round of your patch is
      good.  Send it to the list and cc the maintainer.

  (5) A topic branch is created with the patch and is merged to 'next',
      and cooked further and eventually graduates to 'master'.

 In any time between the (2)-(3) cycle, the maintainer may pick it up
 from the list and queue it to 'pu', in order to make it easier for
 people play with it without having to pick up and apply the patch to
 their trees themselves.

 ------------------------------------------------
 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.

 * Try to apply to the tip of the "master" branch from the
   git.git public repository:

     $ git fetch http://kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.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.

 * 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; "am" would complain that
   the patch does not apply.  Look at .git/rebase-apply/ 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)

 By default, Thunderbird will both wrap emails as well as flag them as
 being 'format=flowed', both of which will make the resulting email unusable
 by git.

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

 There are two different approaches.  One approach is to configure
 Thunderbird to not mangle patches.  The second approach is to use
 an external editor to keep Thunderbird from mangling the patches.

 Approach #1 (configuration):

 This recipe is current as of Thunderbird 2.0.0.19.  Three steps:
   1.  Configure your mail server composition as plain text
       Edit...Account Settings...Composition & Addressing,
         uncheck 'Compose Messages in HTML'.
   2.  Configure your general composition window to not wrap
       Edit..Preferences..Composition, wrap plain text messages at 0
   3.  Disable the use of format=flowed
       Edit..Preferences..Advanced..Config Editor.  Search for:
         mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed
       toggle it to make sure it is set to 'false'.

 After that is done, you should be able to compose email as you
 otherwise would (cut + paste, git-format-patch | git-imap-send, etc),
 and the patches should not be mangled.

 Approach #2 (external editor):

 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.

 *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

 (Lukas Sandström)

 There is a script in contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline which can help
 you include patches with Thunderbird in an easy way. To use it, do the
 steps above and then use the script as the external editor.

 Gnus
 ----

 '|' 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.


 KMail
 -----

 This should help you to submit patches inline using KMail.

 1) Prepare the patch as a text file.

 2) Click on New Mail.

 3) Go under "Options" in the Composer window and be sure that
 "Word wrap" is not set.

 4) Use Message -> Insert file... and insert the patch.

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


 Gmail
 -----

 GMail does not appear to have any way to turn off line wrapping in the web
 interface, so this will mangle any emails that you send.  You can however
 use any IMAP email client to connect to the google imap server, and forward
 the emails through that.  Just make sure to disable line wrapping in that
 email client.  Alternatively, use "git send-email" instead.

 Submitting properly formatted patches via Gmail is simple now that
 IMAP support is available. First, edit your ~/.gitconfig to specify your
 account settings:

 [imap]
 	folder = "[Gmail]/Drafts"
 	host = imaps://imap.gmail.com
 	user = user@gmail.com
 	pass = p4ssw0rd
 	port = 993
 	sslverify = false

 You might need to instead use: folder = "[Google Mail]/Drafts" if you get an error
 that the "Folder doesn't exist".

 Next, ensure that your Gmail settings are correct. In "Settings" the
 "Use Unicode (UTF-8) encoding for outgoing messages" should be checked.

 Once your commits are ready to send to the mailing list, run the following
 command to send the patch emails to your Gmail Drafts folder.

 	$ git format-patch -M --stdout origin/master | git imap-send

 Go to your Gmail account, open the Drafts folder, find the patch email, fill
 in the To: and CC: fields and send away!
	Checklist (and a short version for the impatient):

	Commits:

	- make commits of logical units
	- check for unnecessary whitespace with "git diff --check"
	before committing
	- do not check in commented out code or unneeded files
	- provide a meaningful commit message
	- the first line of the commit message should be a short
	description and should skip the full stop
	- if you want your work included in git.git, add a
	"Signed-off-by: Your Name <you@example.com>" line to the
	commit message (or just use the option "-s" when
	committing) to confirm that you agree to the Developer's
	Certificate of Origin
	- make sure that you have tests for the bug you are fixing
	- make sure that the test suite passes after your commit

	Patch:

	- use "git format-patch -M" to create the patch
	- do not PGP sign your patch
	- do not attach your patch, but read in the mail
	body, unless you cannot teach your mailer to
	leave the formatting of the patch alone.
	- be careful doing cut & paste into your mailer, not to
	corrupt whitespaces.
	- provide additional information (which is unsuitable for
	the commit message) between the "---" and the diffstat
	- if you change, add, or remove a command line option or
	make some other user interface change, the associated
	documentation should be updated as well.
	- if your name is not writable in ASCII, make sure that
	you send off a message in the correct encoding.
	- send the patch to the list (git@vger.kernel.org) and the
	maintainer (gitster@pobox.com) if (and only if) the patch
	is ready for inclusion. If you use git-send-email(1),
	please test it first by sending email to yourself.

	Long version:

	I started reading over the SubmittingPatches document for Linux
	kernel, primarily because I wanted to have a document similar to
	it for the core GIT to make sure people understand what they are
	doing when they write "Signed-off-by" line.

	But the patch submission requirements are a lot more relaxed
	here on the technical/contents front, because the core GIT is
	thousand times smaller ;-). So here is only the relevant bits.


	(1) Make separate commits for logically separate changes.

	Unless your patch is really trivial, you should not be sending
	out a patch that was generated between your working tree and
	your commit head. Instead, always make a commit with complete
	commit message and generate a series of patches from your
	repository. It is a good discipline.

	Describe the technical detail of the change(s).

	If your description starts to get too long, that's a sign that you
	probably need to split up your commit to finer grained pieces.

	Oh, another thing. I am picky about whitespaces. Make sure your
	changes do not trigger errors with the sample pre-commit hook shipped
	in templates/hooks--pre-commit. To help ensure this does not happen,
	run git diff --check on your changes before you commit.


	(1a) Try to be nice to older C compilers

	We try to support a wide range of C compilers to compile
	git with. That means that you should not use C99 initializers, even
	if a lot of compilers grok it.

	Also, variables have to be declared at the beginning of the block
	(you can check this with gcc, using the -Wdeclaration-after-statement
	option).

	Another thing: NULL pointers shall be written as NULL, not as 0.


	(2) Generate your patch using git tools out of your commits.

	git based diff tools (git, Cogito, and StGIT included) generate
	unidiff which is the preferred format.

	You do not have to be afraid to use -M option to "git diff" or
	"git format-patch", if your patch involves file renames. The
	receiving end can handle them just fine.

	Please make sure your patch does not include any extra files
	which do not belong in a patch submission. Make sure to review
	your patch after generating it, to ensure accuracy. Before
	sending out, please make sure it cleanly applies to the "master"
	branch head. If you are preparing a work based on "next" branch,
	that is fine, but please mark it as such.


	(3) Sending your patches.

	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.

	It is a common convention to prefix your subject line with
	[PATCH]. This lets people easily distinguish patches from other
	e-mail discussions. Use of additional markers after PATCH and
	the closing bracket to mark the nature of the patch is also
	encouraged. E.g. [PATCH/RFC] is often used when the patch is
	not ready to be applied but it is for discussion, [PATCH v2],
	[PATCH v3] etc. are often seen when you are sending an update to
	what you have previously sent.

	"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 for
	inclusion.

	Also note that your maintainer does not actively involve himself in
	maintaining what are in contrib/ hierarchy. When you send fixes and
	enhancements to them, do not forget to "cc: " the person who primarily
	worked on that hierarchy in contrib/.


	(4) 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 core GIT 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.

	Notice that you can place your own Signed-off-by: line when
	forwarding somebody else's patch with the above rules for
	D-C-O. Indeed you are encouraged to do so. Do not forget to
	place an in-body "From: " line at the beginning to properly attribute
	the change to its true author (see (2) above).

	Also notice that a real name is used in the Signed-off-by: line. Please
	don't hide your real name.

	Some people also put extra tags at the end.

	"Acked-by:" says that the patch was reviewed by the person who
	is more familiar with the issues and the area the patch attempts
	to modify. "Tested-by:" says the patch was tested by the person
	and found to have the desired effect.

	------------------------------------------------
	An ideal patch flow

	Here is an ideal patch flow for this project the current maintainer
	suggests to the contributors:

	(0) You come up with an itch. You code it up.

	(1) Send it to the list and cc people who may need to know about
	the change.

	The people who may need to know are the ones whose code you
	are butchering. These people happen to be the ones who are
	most likely to be knowledgeable enough to help you, but
	they have no obligation to help you (i.e. you ask for help,
	don't demand). "git log -p -- $area_you_are_modifying" would
	help you find out who they are.

	(2) You get comments and suggestions for improvements. You may
	even get them in a "on top of your change" patch form.

	(3) Polish, refine, and re-send to the list and the people who
	spend their time to improve your patch. Go back to step (2).

	(4) The list forms consensus that the last round of your patch is
	good. Send it to the list and cc the maintainer.

	(5) A topic branch is created with the patch and is merged to 'next',
	and cooked further and eventually graduates to 'master'.

	In any time between the (2)-(3) cycle, the maintainer may pick it up
	from the list and queue it to 'pu', in order to make it easier for
	people play with it without having to pick up and apply the patch to
	their trees themselves.

	------------------------------------------------
	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.

	* Try to apply to the tip of the "master" branch from the
	git.git public repository:

	$ git fetch http://kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.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.

	* 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; "am" would complain that
	the patch does not apply. Look at .git/rebase-apply/ 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)

	By default, Thunderbird will both wrap emails as well as flag them as
	being 'format=flowed', both of which will make the resulting email unusable
	by git.

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

	There are two different approaches. One approach is to configure
	Thunderbird to not mangle patches. The second approach is to use
	an external editor to keep Thunderbird from mangling the patches.

	Approach #1 (configuration):

	This recipe is current as of Thunderbird 2.0.0.19. Three steps:
	1. Configure your mail server composition as plain text
	Edit...Account Settings...Composition & Addressing,
	uncheck 'Compose Messages in HTML'.
	2. Configure your general composition window to not wrap
	Edit..Preferences..Composition, wrap plain text messages at 0
	3. Disable the use of format=flowed
	Edit..Preferences..Advanced..Config Editor. Search for:
	mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed
	toggle it to make sure it is set to 'false'.

	After that is done, you should be able to compose email as you
	otherwise would (cut + paste, git-format-patch \| git-imap-send, etc),
	and the patches should not be mangled.

	Approach #2 (external editor):

	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.

	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

	(Lukas Sandström)

	There is a script in contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline which can help
	you include patches with Thunderbird in an easy way. To use it, do the
	steps above and then use the script as the external editor.

	Gnus
	----

	'\|' 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.


	KMail
	-----

	This should help you to submit patches inline using KMail.

	1) Prepare the patch as a text file.

	2) Click on New Mail.

	3) Go under "Options" in the Composer window and be sure that
	"Word wrap" is not set.

	4) Use Message -> Insert file... and insert the patch.

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


	Gmail
	-----

	GMail does not appear to have any way to turn off line wrapping in the web
	interface, so this will mangle any emails that you send. You can however
	use any IMAP email client to connect to the google imap server, and forward
	the emails through that. Just make sure to disable line wrapping in that
	email client. Alternatively, use "git send-email" instead.

	Submitting properly formatted patches via Gmail is simple now that
	IMAP support is available. First, edit your ~/.gitconfig to specify your
	account settings:

	[imap]
	folder = "[Gmail]/Drafts"
	host = imaps://imap.gmail.com
	user = user@gmail.com
	pass = p4ssw0rd
	port = 993
	sslverify = false

	You might need to instead use: folder = "[Google Mail]/Drafts" if you get an error
	that the "Folder doesn't exist".

	Next, ensure that your Gmail settings are correct. In "Settings" the
	"Use Unicode (UTF-8) encoding for outgoing messages" should be checked.

	Once your commits are ready to send to the mailing list, run the following
	command to send the patch emails to your Gmail Drafts folder.

	$ git format-patch -M --stdout origin/master \| git imap-send

	Go to your Gmail account, open the Drafts folder, find the patch email, fill
	in the To: and CC: fields and send away!