On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 1:34 AM Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 07:22:08AM +0100, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:

quoted

One thing that made me stop though is the folowing sentence in
git-format-patch(1):

  Use ident in the From: header of each commit email.

The option explicitly mentions that we use "--from" for the commit
emails, only, and that may be read as implying that it's not used for
the cover letter.

I don't really know whether that wording is intentional, and I cannot
come up with a good reason why it should be. But I'd say that the
wording is something we should adjust.

I think that wording comes from me back in 2013, and I just never gave
any thought to cover-letter generation by format-patch itself. I never
use it (and I probably forgot it even existed, given that most people
would use send-email's cover letter generation, and I do my own thing
with mutt).

Funny: the send-email manual's main mention of cover letters apart
from setting Cc/To fields is in an example…

           $ git format-patch --cover-letter -M origin/master -o outgoing/
           $ edit outgoing/0000-*
           $ git send-email outgoing/*

…using format-patch! (Which is how I generate cover letters, and
probably part of why.)

-- 
D. Ben Knoble