linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 19/20] drivers/net/ethernet/marvell/skge.c: fix error return code

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Date:	Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:40:30 -0300
From:	Ezequiel Garcia <elezegarcia@...il.com>
To:	Peter Senna Tschudin <peter.senna@...il.com>
Cc:	Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@...6.fr>, Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, shemminger@...tta.com,
	mlindner@...vell.com, kernel-janitors@...r.kernel.org,
	netdev@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 19/20] drivers/net/ethernet/marvell/skge.c: fix error
 return code

Hi Peter,

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Peter Senna Tschudin
<peter.senna@...il.com> 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
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