On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 09:29:30AM -0400, Alex Deucher wrote: > On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 8:45 AM Simona Vetter <simona.vet...@ffwll.ch> wrote: > > I do occasionally find it useful as a record of different approaches > > considered, which sometimes people fail to adequately cover in their > > commit messages. Also useful indicator of how cursed a patch is :-) > > > > But as long as anything relevant does end up in the commit message and > > people don't just delete stuff I don't care how it's done at all. It's > > just that the cost of deleting something that should have been there can > > be really nasty sometimes, and storage is cheap. > > I like them for the same reasons. Also, even with links, sometimes > there are forks of the conversation that get missed that a changelog > provides some insight into. I find it useful in my own development as > I can note what I've changed in a patch and can retain that in the > commit rather than as something I need to track separately and then > add to the patches when I send them out.
Personally, I don't think it's super useful in the commit message, it still remains in the patches sent to the mailing list though. And since we put lore links everywhere, it's easily accessible, *including* the context of why a change was made from one version to another, i.e. the full conversation. However, if we really want that, we should make it an offical thing, since currently the kernel's process documentation [1] clearly states otherwise: "Please put this information after the '---' line which separates the changelog from the rest of the patch. The version information is not part of the changelog which gets committed to the git tree. It is additional information for the reviewers. If it's placed above the commit tags, it needs manual interaction to remove it." Alternatively, it can go into the cover letter. [1] https://docs.kernel.org/process/submitting-patches.html#commentary
