Re: [RFC][PATCH] update SubmittingPatches to clarify attachmentpolicy

From: Dave Hansen
Date: Wed May 04 2005 - 12:36:29 EST


On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 13:16 -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx wrote:
> On Wed, 04 May 2005 10:01:56 PDT, Dave Hansen said:
>
> > -6) No MIME, no links, no compression, no attachments. Just plain text.
> > +6) No MIME, no links, no compression. Just plain text.
>
> Logically buggy. You can't have an attachment without the MIME markup that
> *says* it's an attachment. I think what you meant was "No Content-Type-Encoding":
> i.e. 'none' is acceptable, but 'quoted-printable' (which causes all the
> spurious =20 and =3D you sometimes see) and 'base64' (uuencode on steroids)
> aren't....

Thanks for pointing out my flawed logic. I wasn't quite sure what was
MIME and what wasn't. How about the attached patch, instead?

-- Dave

I think the general opinion of posting patches as attachments
has changed over the last few years. Mailers have been getting
a lot better at handling them, even quoting non-message-body
plain/text attachments in replies.

Plus, a plain/text attachment message saved to a file can go
into 'patch' the same way that an inline one can.

Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@xxxxxxxxxx>
---

memhotplug-dave/Documentation/SubmittingPatches | 20 ++++++++++++++------
1 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff -L Documentation/Submitting -puN /dev/null /dev/null
diff -puN Documentation/SubmittingPatches~submitting-patches Documentation/SubmittingPatches
--- memhotplug/Documentation/SubmittingPatches~submitting-patches 2005-05-04 08:07:25.000000000 -0700
+++ memhotplug-dave/Documentation/SubmittingPatches 2005-05-04 10:22:43.000000000 -0700
@@ -181,25 +181,33 @@ patches. Trivial patches must qualify fo



-6) No MIME, no links, no compression, no attachments. Just plain text.
+6) No links, no compressed attachments. Just plain text.

Linus and other kernel developers need to be able to read and comment
on the changes you are submitting. It is important for a kernel
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 submitting e-mail "inline".
+For this reason, the preferred way of submitting patches in e-mail is
+"inline", in the same part of the message with everything else.
WARNING: Be wary of your editor's word-wrap corrupting your patch,
if you choose to cut-n-paste your patch.

-Do not attach the patch as a MIME attachment, compressed or not.
+Many maintainers will now accept patches submitted to them as
+text/plain attachments. Many mailers quote these attachements in the
+same way that they do for inline patches. But, some maintainers still
+prefer inlines and they are certainly the safest bet. In any case,
+never attach more than one patch to a single e-mail.
+
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 Linus a bit more time to process,
-decreasing the likelihood of your MIME-attached change being accepted.
+code. If you must use an attachment, verify that it has no
+Content-Type-Encoding. A MIME attachment also takes Linus a bit more
+time to process, decreasing the likelihood of your MIME-attached
+change being accepted.

Exception: If your mailer is mangling patches then someone may ask
-you to re-send them using MIME.
+you to re-send them compressed or using other MIME encodings.



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