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E-mail Interface to the U-Boot Patch Tracking System

Prepare and Submit Patch or Patches

Patches are submitted to the U-Boot Patch Tracking System by sending them as e-mail to the address <u-boot-patches@bugs.denx.de>.

We assume that the patch(es) are available as commit(s) in a git repository. In the first step, we prepare patches for e-mail submission, then we send them out. Here we show how to submit a series of three patches:

  1. Create directory to store the patches 
    $ mkdir /tmp/patches
    ALERT! Note: if you use the same directory again for a new series of patches, you should make sure that no old files are left there: 
    $ rm -fr /tmp/patches/*
  2. Use git-format-patch to format the 3 topmost commits as patch series: 
    $ git-format-patch -n -o /tmp/patches HEAD~3
/tmp/patches/0001-TEST-add-file.patch
/tmp/patches/0002-TEST-format-text.patch
/tmp/patches/0003-TEST-add-author-name.patch
    For a single patch, everything is the same except that you can (and probably should) omit the "-n" option.
  3. Now we use git-send-email to actually send the patches to the Tracking System: 
    $ git-send-email -q -to u-boot-patches@bugs.denx.de /tmp/patches
Who should the emails appear to be from? [Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>] 
Emails will be sent from: Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>
Message-ID to be used as In-Reply-To for the first email? 
Sent [PATCH 1/3] TEST: add file
Sent [PATCH 2/3] TEST: format text
Sent [PATCH 3/3] TEST: add author name

What happened to my patches?

When you submitted patches to the Tracking System, they enter it in Category "unassigned-patches", see Life Cycle of a Patch.

The sender of the patch, and all addresses listed in the [GnatsNotifyList]["Notify-List"]] receive an e-mail about the new patch that looks like this: 

Subject: unassigned-patches/19: [PATCH 1/3] TEST: add file
From: u-boot@bugs.denx.de
Date: Sat,  2 Aug 2008 22:15:01 +0200 (CEST)
To: Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>
Cc: U-boot Development List <u-boot@lists.denx.de>

Signed-off-by: Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>

---
Added to GNATS database as unassigned-patches/19
>Responsible:    patch-coord
>Message-Id:     <1217707968-24231-1-git-send-email-wd@denx.de>
>In-Reply-To:    
>References:     
>Patch-Date:     Sat Aug 02 22:12:46 +0200 2008
---
...

You can also easily check this using the Web Interface to GNATS.

Following up with Patch Submissions

How E-mail Processing Works

The U-Boot Patch Tracking System is just one out of several databases within the GNATS setup on our server. To submit a *patch*†, you send an e-mail message to the corresponding "<db>-patches@bugs.denx.de" mail address. To submit a patch for U-Boot, please send it to "u-boot-patches@bugs.denx.de"

† Note: only "patches" are accepted at this mail address; any message that does not look like a patch will be rejected.

The processing of the incoming patches is performed by the script parsepatches.pl:

Purpose:
The task of the parsepatches.pl script is to verify that an e-mail message contains a patch and to bring it into a format that is easily digestible by GNATS.

The script handles both patches that come "inline" in the message body and such that are included as MIME attachments.
Function:
The task to bring he e-mail message into a standard form in performed by running git-mailinfo. This has several advantages:
  • This is the most complicated part of the task, so it is nice that we can re-use existing code.
  • We automatically benefit from upstream improvements by just keeping git updated.
  • Most of the problems that have to be handled when parsing a patch can then be tested much easier and independent from the remaining setup.

    git-mailinfo splits the e-mail message into 3 parts:
  • information (Subject, Author, Date, E-mail address)
  • Message (all text that does not belong to the patch itself)
  • Patch

    Additionally, we also parse the header of the e-mail to extract some information that is ignored by git-mailinfo. We extract the followong mail headers:
  • Message-Id
  • References
  • In-Reply-To
  • Organization

    Finally, the script parses the "Message" part for well-known (Signed-off|Acked|Tested|Reviewed)-by pseudo-headers. E-mail addresses found in such headers are added to the "Notify-List".

    All this information then gets assembled into a GNATS Problem Report, which looks as follows (copy & paste from real code): 
    From: $info{author} <$info{email}>
To: GNATS
Subject:
X-ParsePatches-Version: $VERSION

>Synopsis: $info{subject}
>Originator: $info{author} <$info{email}>
>Submitter-Id: patch-submission
>Organization: $info{organization}
>Notify-List: $notify
>Category: unassigned-patches
>Class: patch
>Priority: low
>Severity: non-critical
>Message-Id: $info{msgid}
>In-Reply-To: $info{in_reply_to}
>References: $info{references}
>Patch-Date: $info{date}
>Fix: N/A
>Description:
HEAD
    ;
insert_file($pr, "$tempdir/msg-clean");
print $pr ">Patch:\n";
insert_file($pr, "$tempdir/patch");

-- WolfgangDenk - 01 Aug 2008