format-patch and send-email

Hi,

I tried to use format-patch and send-email but I think I am misusing them because it does not react as I would expect.

First, here is how git log looks like on my little repository:

commit 50c7032fa011b1e5c7bd63e4bc474c802017677d

Author: Xavier Maillard <[email protected]>
Date:   Fri Feb 16 20:20:18 2007 +0100

* Added 2007 to the copyright notice
* Added a note on relation between org-publish and blorg
* Changed/corrected things here and there
* Added a warning on needed skills before manipulating your own templates

commit 0e35f7847c7becc52ebcd51d9b043c626f9b3b3f

Author: Xavier Maillard <[email protected]>
Date:   Fri Feb 16 20:03:42 2007 +0100

new file: doc/blorg.texi (original version)

Now I want to extract a patch and set it ready to be sent (I added head -20 just to illustrate my problem):

git-format-patch --stdout -k 0e35f7847c7becc52ebcd51d9b043c626f9b3b3f | head -12

From: Xavier Maillard <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:20:18 +0100
Subject: * Added 2007 to the copyright notice
To: <[email protected]>
* Added a note on relation between org-publish and blorg
* Changed/corrected things here and there
* Added a warning on needed skills before manipulating your own templates

---
 doc/blorg.texi |   31 +++++++++++++++++++------------
 1 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

The "To" header has been set up in my .git/config file. But why the 'Subject' is like this and also why are there 2 'From' headers ?

Actually, why can't I just do like this ? :

git format-patch <origin> | git send-email ?

Thank you for your explanations.

Xavier

The "format-patch" output was designed to (minimally) mimic what you would see in a UNIX mbox as if you (or whoever would apply the e-mailed patches to repository) received it, so that anybody can later run "am" on it. The first "From " is what sometimes is called "UNIX-From " line, which separates each piece of e-mail in mbox formatted mailbox file. The second one is used to record the author of the patch.

The commit log message is expected to be:

A single line description of a patch

More detailed explanation of the patch with possibly multi-line or multi-paragraph text.

and the single line description becomes the subject.

Your commit seems to squash four completely unrelated changes into one, and enumerates only single-liner description for each independent item, like this:

* foo
* bar
* baz
* boa

which makes format-patch think you wanted to title it "* foo" with more detailed description "* bar *baz *boa". I think you would be much happier if you acquired a habit to make smaller commits, that touch only one thing at a time without mixing up unrelated things together, and give more descriptive messages to each of them.

While I know format-patch can be told to write to standard output, I do not know if send-email can be told to read from the standard input (I do not use send-email myself). Some people seem to use send-imap to stuff format-patch output to imap drafts. I just read format-patch output into message composition buffer of my MUA (message mode of Emacs) and send it out just as an ordinary e-mail (iow, as if I typed it). In other words, you do not have to use send-email as-is, if what it does does not suit your needs.

I suspect the intended usage original author of "send-email" envisioned was to have lots of format-patch output files and send them in bulk, so probably reading from standard input was not high on its design goals. I dunno.

While I do believe some people use it, I haven't seen much active development/enhancement on send-email from the users lately.

Hi Junio,

Ok so I need to revert my usual practise :)

Thank you for your answers. I know have understood what was wrong ;)

Regards,

Xavier