Subject: Re: bug#58813: [PATCH v2] doc: Document how to use Patman for patches submission.

From: Simon Tournier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2023 09:47:01 +0100

Hi Liliana,

On Wed, 08 Mar 2023 at 06:29, Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Am Dienstag, dem 07.03.2023 um 18:39 +0100 schrieb Simon Tournier:

>> I still think this documentation for configuring ’patman’ about
>> “Patch management” is helpful.  I think it could be part of the
>> manual.  If not for reasons I am missing, at least this documentation
>> should be included in the Cookbook.
>
> There are two discussions here:
>
> 1. Should we "mandate" the use of patman?
> 2. Should we describe how to use patman for submitting patches to Guix?
>
> I think most agree with the latter, but disagree with the former. 
> Thus, whatever steps you add for the use with patman must be easily
> enough replicated by people not using it, or else we risk low adoption
> of best practices.

Well, I am not sure to understand “mandate”.  There is many tools that
appears in the Guix manual that are not “mandatory” but just
recommendations.  For instance, Emacs, emacs-geiser, emacs-debbugs, etc.
And even Git is not mandatory, maybe some people prefer Dulwich
(pure-Python implementation) or maybe others use ’gix’ (pure-Rust
implementation).  It would be fun to deal with Guix patches using gix. ;-)

So, I read “mandate” as recommend, hoping that I am not missing the
meaning you put behind the quoted mandate. :-)

About #1, I understand and I agree that the manual cannot recommend all
the tools on Earth and we have to make choices in order to keep it
clear, especially when newcomers is facing in the front of how to deal
with patches.

That’s why I also proposed to move this dedicated section about “Patch
management using patman” to the cookbook. :-)  It somehow answers #1 and
the item #2 is almost done.

Well, I do not have a strong opinion.  On a side note, because I am
lazy, if there is no pre-configuration that I can adapt, I will not try
patman.

Cheers,
simon