Subject: Re: [PATCH] fsck: use starts_with() in fsck_commit()

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2025 20:58:33 -0700

Christian Couder <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 11:01 PM keita <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> From 30136adebaffb97edacae2c58c4ea491e39e3f5b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001From: Songiso Cooper Lyambai <[email-masked]>
>> Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2025 23:45:23 +0200
>> Subject: [PATCH] fsck: use starts_with() in fsck_commit()
>
> If this is related to Outreachy, it would be better to put
> "[Outreachy]" at the start of the subject.

Plus there is a lot more important thing to be said for this part fo
the lines that you forgot to point out.  They should *NOT* be part
of the e-mail body.  The Subject: header of the e-mail seems to be
set to the same as this line, so the sender only needs to delete all
these four lines from the e-mail body and correct the subject.

>>  {
>> - struct object_id tree_oid, parent_oid;
>> - unsigned author_count;
>> - int err;
>> - const char *buffer_begin = buffer;
>> - const char *buffer_end = buffer + size;
>> - const char *p;
>> +    struct object_id tree_oid, parent_oid;
>> +    unsigned author_count = 0;
>> +    int err = 0;
>> +    const char *buffer_end = buffer + size;
>> +    const char *p;
>
> Here also I suspect that the indentation changes are not necessary.
> They are also making it ...

Does the preimage even match our code?  There is no C code in our
codebase that uses a single space indent, so I would not expect
these 7 lines of preimage to be found in fsck.c or anywhere in our
codebase.

Hence, another more important thing to point out is that the patch
would not apply.  A suggestion to the author (and other aspiring
folks who want to become Git developers) is to

 - Send the patch you are planning to submit, but not to the list
   but only to yourself.

 - Subscribe to the list and then observe the traffic for a day or
   two to find patch e-mails from others.  Find other patch e-mails
   from each of these people at https://lore.kernel.org/git and pick
   the author who is highly regarded.

 - Compare the e-mailed patch you received from yourself, and the
   one you received from the list written by that highly regarded
   author you picked.  I am reasonably sure that they do not have
   the e-mail headers repeated.

 - In your clone of Git, check out an appropriate target; if you are
   fixing something, you want to use a tag that corresponds to a
   released version, if you are proposing a new feature, you want to
   build on the latest released version.  Use "git am" to apply the
   e-mailed patch you received from yourself.

We may want to #leftoverbits add something like the above to the
MyFirstContribution document near the part that it teachs to send
patches.

> Please make sure you send patches that don't change the indentation
> for no good reason.

A good suggestion that applies much wider than the indentation.
Your patch should not do anything related to the theme of the patch,
whcih you explained in your proposed log message.