Re: Problems with git am

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:

"Alan" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

The header of the patch looks like:

commit 62b266585bb5555d44a764c90d80f9c4bb8188c1
Author: Joe Example [off-list ref]
Date:   Wed Sep 19 10:03:47 2009 -0600

It shouldn't.

The format "git am" understands is a mbox file and format-patch is the
command to write commits out in that form.  It should begin with lines
that look like:

   From 610f99ec7d22b5750f12350f67c1341d6be8030f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
   From: Junio C Hamano [off-list ref]
   Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:41:09 -0700
   Subject: [PATCH] Update draft release notes to 1.6.6

   Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano [off-list ref]
   ---
   .... patch follows here ...

I do not think it is particularly hard to add a new case arm in "am" to
support "git log" output.  It is different from a mbox format in that it

* begins each commit with "commit " marker;
* has Author: and Date: header that is different from a mailbox;
* lacks Subject: but makes it part of the message body; and
* indents the message by 4 places.

Nobody has bothered to do so, probably because nobody needed it.

[Insert long string of profanity cut and pasted from Linus' description of 
CVS and Subversion.]

The easiest, safest and quickest for you right now (meaning, before
waiting for anybody to help you by adding a new feature to "am") would be
to see if it is possible for you to get the commits re-exported in an
appropriate format.

I can get them reexported. I may have problems getting them to do that 
correctly on a regular basis...

I may have to write the am branch myself.

I say the "safest" in the above because you _could_ massage what you have
into a format that looks like a mbox with some Perl script, but it risks
mismassaging.

Yeah.

The other question is what the proper behaviour when git-am in unable to 
process a patch.  Under git 1.6.0, it exits with a non-zero error code. 
Under the current git in the git repo it issues and error and exits with a 
non-error exit code.

What should the correct behaviour be in this case?

-- 
Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.