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SubmittingPatches: discourage common Linux trailers 

The Linux Kernel regularly uses trailers (or “tags”) `Fixes` and
`Link`. Sometimes people submit patches to this project with them.
They have their use in that project but it is not clear what purpose
they would serve here.

For `Fixes`: Linux has many trees, and applying patches with
cherry-picks is common. A `Fixes` trailer in commit C2 pointing to
commit C1 helps the cherry-picker figure out that she probably needs
C2 if she wants to apply C1. See linux/d5d6281a (checkpatch: check for
missing Fixes tags, 2024-06-11):[1]

    Why are stable patches encouraged to have a fixes tag?  Some people
    mark their stable patches as "# 5.10" etc.  This is useful but a
    Fixes tag is still a good idea.  For example, the Fixes tag helps in
    review.  It helps people to not cherry-pick buggy patches without
    also cherry-picking the fix.

In contrast the Git project has few trees (to my knowledge), and there
is much less need to cherry-pick fixes as opposed to either using
backmerges or rebasing all of the downstream tree’s commits on top of
git.git `master` from time to time.

This project does regularly mention what commits a patch/commit fixes,
but that is done inline in the commit message proper (cf. the trailer
block of the message).

For `Link`: These are used both to link back to the patch submission as
well as with footnotes. In contrast this project has `refs/notes/amlog`
for linking back to the patch submissions, and footnotes are only used
in the commit message proper.

† 1: Commit linux/d5d6281a has “linux” in front of it since this commit
     is from the Linux Kernel, not Git. Example of a Linux tree—as well
     as an example of `Link`—is [2].

Link: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/ [2]
Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
main
Kristoffer Haugsbakk 2026-06-19 07:44:51 +02:00 committed by Junio C Hamano
parent d0c6ecea23
commit b7f68ff5c9
1 changed files with 4 additions and 0 deletions
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@ -476,6 +476,10 @@ While you can also create your own trailer if the situation warrants it, we
encourage you to instead use one of the common trailers in this project
highlighted above.

Other projects might regularly refer to other kinds of data, like
`Fixes:` and `Link:` in the Linux Kernel project, but these ones in
particular are not used in this project.

Only capitalize the very first letter of the trailer, i.e. favor
"Signed-off-by" over "Signed-Off-By" and "Acked-by:" over "Acked-By".