[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v3 00/40] Fix build on gcc8 and various bugs

Andy Green andy at warmcat.com
Fri May 11 02:29:35 CEST 2018



On 05/10/2018 11:01 PM, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Thu, 10 May 2018 20:13:31 +0800
> Andy Green <andy at warmcat.com> wrote:
> 
>> I appreciate the reply.
>>
>> But why bother having a subject line at all if it is going to be
>> mechanically enforced that nothing in it is allowed to be "useful"?
>> That really doesn't make sense does it.
> 
> 
> It was done because there were lots of clueless patches showing
> up on the driver development list which had useless subject
> lines.

The "cure" is worse than the disease...

  - I can mention, eg, that something changed to an int.  But a size_t 
or my_type_t?  I am not allowed to mention it even if that is the whole 
reason for the patch.

  - I can mention most libc apis, but not those that happen to have an 
underscore, eg, timerfd_create(), even if that was the focus of the patch.

  - Any kind of manifest constant like MY_CONSTANT: illegal to mention, 
even if the patch's job is change MY_CONSTANT to, say, 5.  What should I 
entitle that patch?  "lib: change something to 5"?  "lib: change 
MY.CONSTANT to 5"?

  - I can mention most filenames or paths, eg, down /proc, or myfile.c. 
But not if the filepath happens to contain an underscore.  Even if the 
effect of the patch is to migrate stuff from myfile.c to my_files/

The results are arbitrary... please consider removing this now it has 
been in place a while and made its original point.

-Andy


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