Re: Link trailers revisited (was Re: [GIT PULL] io_uring fix for 6.17-rc5)

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Sat, 6 Sept 2025 at 06:51, Konstantin Ryabitsev
<konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, `shazam -M` is not perfect, because we do need to know the
> base-commit, and there's still way too many series sent without this info.

No, no. You're thinking about it wrong.

An emailed patch series is *not* a git pull. If you want actual real
git history, just use git. Using a patch series and shazam for that
would be *bad*. It's actively worse than just using git, with zero
upside.

No, the upside of a patch series is that it's *not* fixed in stone yet
- not in history, not in acks, not in actual code. So do *not*
encourage people to think of it as some second-rate "git history"
model. It's not, and it would be *BAD* at it.

Instead, embrace the "it's a patch series". You should *not* strive to
make "b4 shazam" think it should recreate the original git tree. not
at all.

Instead, it should be a "here's a patch series with a cover letter,
make a pretty history of it, delineate it with a merge, and save the
relevant information from the cover letter in the merge message".

Look, we already have subsystems that do that. I don't know if they
use b4 shazam - maybe they do, maybe they don't - but the end result
is what matters.

For example, the networking people use this model for small series of
patches, and you can see it in patterns like this (I picked a random
area, this is meant to illustrate the point, the commits themselves
are not relevant):

    gitk d2644cbc736f..f63e7c8a8389

and look at the kind of "pseudo-linear" history, where small series
are delineated with that separate branch and merge, but this is *not*
some kind of global history where people tried to keep original commit
bases around etc.

That kind of global history would be *worse* for the whole "send
patches by email" model.

So don't strive to replicate git - badly. Strive to do a *good* job.

Your comment about how you want to know the base commit makes me think
you are missing the point.

git is git.

And emailed patch series are a different thing entirely, and trying
for some 1:1 thing only makes things objectively worse.

                  Linus