Subject: git format-patch should honor notes

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:53:09 -0700

I'm just starting to experiment with 'git notes', because it seems to
fit well with my workflow on several projects, except for one drawback.

My workflow is that I post patch series for upstream review via 'git
send-email'.  Often, that results in feedback that requires me to
amend/rebase my series, and post a v2 or v3 of the series.  By adding
'git config notes.rewriteRef refs/notes/commits', I can add notes that
will carry across my rebase, and remind me what I changed in v2 (for
example, git notes add -m 'v2: fix foo, per mail [email-masked]').
This is handy for me, and I think it is also handy for reviewers -
someone who took the time to read through v1 should know what I changed
in response to their comments, and only have to focus in on commits with
changes, rather than on the entire resent series.

However, I think such review helps are informational only - that is, in
'git send-email' parlance, they belong between the '-- ' and diffstat
lines of the email, and not in the upstream commit.  After all, once my
series is finally accepted upstream, it will no longer be rebased, and
'git bisect' sees only the final version.  I see no reason for the
commit message to carry the cruft of extra information that was only
helpful during reviewing the amended series, nor any reason why upstream
should carry around my notes.

So, what I'm missing is the ability for 'git send-email' (or more
fundamentally, 'git format-patch') to be able to include contents of a
particular (set of) notes reference in each patch file it generates,
where the note falls in the informative portion of the email, and is
intentionally omitted from the upstream commit when someone else runs
'git am' on my email.

-- 
Eric Blake   [email-masked]    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org