Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755059Ab2JJRkf (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:40:35 -0400 Received: from mail-wi0-f178.google.com ([209.85.212.178]:57160 "EHLO mail-wi0-f178.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750948Ab2JJRkb (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:40:31 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: <20121004.142335.1467206545795435493.davem@davemloft.net> <20121004.145419.1859367129463136197.davem@davemloft.net> <1349395795.2008.26.camel@joe-AO722> <1349422595.2008.55.camel@joe-AO722> Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:40:30 -0300 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH 19/20] drivers/net/ethernet/marvell/skge.c: fix error return code From: Ezequiel Garcia To: Peter Senna Tschudin Cc: Julia Lawall , Joe Perches , David Miller , shemminger@vyatta.com, mlindner@marvell.com, kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2257 Lines: 62 Hi Peter, On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Peter Senna Tschudin wrote: > Stephen and David, > > I've sent V2 of the patches and they were all accepted. Thank you. > > I've made a template for the commit message, and then copy and paste > function names from the code. Something like: > > -- // -- > The function sky2_probe() return 0 for success and negative value > for most of its internal tests failures. There are two exceptions > that are error cases going to err_out*:. For this two cases, the > function abort its success execution path, but returns non negative > value, making it dificult for a caller function to notice the error. > > This patch fixes the error cases that do not return negative values. > > This was found by Coccinelle, but the code change was made by hand. > This patch is not robot generated. > ... > --//-- > > How useful it was to have the function names when you were analyzing > the patches? It took me a lot of time to modify the template by copy > and paste, check if it is correct, then commit. I have some other > similar patches to submit and I wonder if having the function names in > the commit message helped you. > Having real function names in your commit message won't make it more useful. IMHO, the problem is you're still using a template commit message, which produces a robot-like commit message. Developers don't like that, we prefer to see a text written by some guy explaining why is this patch needed, and what it's fixing/improving from an overall point of view. This is not easy and takes much training. I believe patches should help maintainers, not only add work them, so it's important to double-triple-check the patch and double-triple-check the commit message. I know this is tedious and it'll slow you a bit. But it's a good thing: it means you are working :-) Also, in this particular case, where the coccinelle does not fix something obvious, then I'd say you should be *extra* careful. Hope this helps. Ezequiel -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/