Re: [PATCH] docs: submitting-patches: Require base tree information

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2026 at 09:22:35PM +0000, Eric Biggers wrote:
> Many patches still don't include base tree information and can't be
> applied.  Such patches can't be properly reviewed or tested, nor can
> they be accepted.  submitting-patches.rst already describes how to
> include base tree information, but it's characterized as optional,
> appears only towards the end of the document, and is missing details.

I'm happy with this change, but I'd disambiguate the title a bit. With b4, we
started providing both a base-commit and base-tree footer, specifically
because often times the "base-commit:" line by itself is not sufficient.

Imagine this scenario: a developer is working on some code in a feature branch
and come across a pre-existing bug. They create a fork off of their feature
branch to fix the bug and send it in. In this situation, the "base-commit"
footer would be meaningless, because it references some transient commit-id in
their feature branch. In an ideal scenario, the developer would rebase that
bugfix branch on a known tag, but that doesn't always happen.

This observation doesn't really preclude this patch from being accepted, I'm
just recording my own experience that, by itself, base-commit is often
insufficient.

Reviewed-by: Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

-K