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<body class="article">
<div id="header">
<h1>Reviewing Patches in the Git Project</h1>
<span id="revdate"></span>
</div>
<div id="content">
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_introduction">Introduction</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>The Git development community is a widely distributed, diverse, ever-changing
group of individuals. Asynchronous communication via the Git mailing list poses
unique challenges when reviewing or discussing patches. This document contains
some guiding principles and helpful tools you can use to make your reviews both
more efficient for yourself and more effective for other contributors.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Note that none of the recommendations here are binding or in any way a
requirement of participation in the Git community. They are provided as a
resource to supplement your skills as a contributor.</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_principles">Principles</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_selecting_patch_es_to_review">Selecting patch(es) to review</h3>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you are looking for a patch series in need of review, start by checking
the latest "What&#8217;s cooking in git.git" email
(<a href="https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqilm1yp3m.fsf@gitster.g/">example</a>). The "What&#8217;s
cooking" emails &amp; replies can be found using the query <code>s:"What's cooking"</code> on
the <a href="https://lore.kernel.org/git/"><code>lore.kernel.org</code> mailing list archive</a>;
alternatively, you can find the contents of the "What&#8217;s cooking" email tracked
in <code>whats-cooking.txt</code> on the <code>todo</code> branch of Git. Topics tagged with "Needs
review" and those in the "[New Topics]" section are typically those that would
benefit the most from additional review.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Patches can also be searched manually in the mailing list archive using a query
like <code>s:"PATCH" -s:"Re:"</code>. You can browse these results for topics relevant to
your expertise or interest.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you&#8217;ve already contributed to Git, you may also be CC&#8217;d in another
contributor&#8217;s patch series. These are topics where the author feels that your
attention is warranted. This may be because their patch changes something you
wrote previously (making you a good judge of whether the new approach does or
doesn&#8217;t work), or because you have the expertise to provide an exceptionally
helpful review. There is no requirement to review these patches but, in the
spirit of open source collaboration, you should strongly consider doing so.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_reviewing_patches">Reviewing patches</h3>
<div class="paragraph"><p>While every contributor takes their own approach to reviewing patches, here are
some general pieces of advice to make your reviews as clear and helpful as
possible. The advice is broken into two rough categories: high-level reviewing
guidance, and concrete tips for interacting with patches on the mailing list.</p></div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_high_level_guidance">High-level guidance</h4>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Remember to review the content of commit messages for correctness and clarity,
  in addition to the code change in the patch&#8217;s diff. The commit message of a
  patch should accurately and fully explain the code change being made in the
  diff.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Reviewing test coverage is an important - but easy to overlook - component of
  reviews. A patch&#8217;s changes may be covered by existing tests, or new tests may
  be introduced to exercise new behavior. Checking out a patch or series locally
  allows you to manually mutate lines of new &amp; existing tests to verify expected
  pass/fail behavior. You can use this information to verify proper coverage or
  to suggest additional tests the author could add.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
When providing a recommendation, be as clear as possible about whether you
  consider it "blocking" (the code would be broken or otherwise made worse if an
  issue isn&#8217;t fixed) or "non-blocking" (the patch could be made better by taking
  the recommendation, but acceptance of the series does not require it).
  Non-blocking recommendations can be particularly ambiguous when they are
  related to - but outside the scope of - a series ("nice-to-have"s), or when
  they represent only stylistic differences between the author and reviewer.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
When commenting on an issue, try to include suggestions for how the author
  could fix it. This not only helps the author to understand and fix the issue,
  it also deepens and improves your understanding of the topic.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Reviews do not need to exclusively point out problems. Feel free to "think out
  loud" in your review: describe how you read &amp; understood a complex section of
  a patch, ask a question about something that confused you, point out something
  you found exceptionally well-written, etc. In particular, uplifting feedback
  goes a long way towards encouraging contributors to participate more actively
  in the Git community.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_performing_your_review">Performing your review</h4>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Provide your review comments per-patch in a plaintext "Reply-All" email to the
  relevant patch. Comments should be made inline, immediately below the relevant
  section(s).
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
You may find that the limited context provided in the patch diff is sometimes
  insufficient for a thorough review. In such cases, you can review patches in
  your local tree by either applying patches with <a href="git-am.html">git-am(1)</a> or checking
  out the associated branch from <a href="https://github.com/gitster/git">https://github.com/gitster/git</a> once the series
  is tracked there.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Large, complicated patch diffs are sometimes unavoidable, such as when they
  refactor existing code. If you find such a patch difficult to parse, try
  reviewing the diff produced with the <code>--color-moved</code> and/or
  <code>--ignore-space-change</code> options.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
If a patch is long, you are encouraged to delete parts of it that are
  unrelated to your review from the email reply. Make sure to leave enough
  context for readers to understand your comments!
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
If you cannot complete a full review of a series all at once, consider letting
  the author know (on- or off-list) if/when you plan to review the rest of the
  series.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_completing_a_review">Completing a review</h3>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Once each patch of a series is reviewed, the author (and/or other contributors)
may discuss the review(s). This may result in no changes being applied, or the
author will send a new version of their patch(es).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>After a series is rerolled in response to your or others' review, make sure to
re-review the updates. If you are happy with the state of the patch series,
explicitly indicate your approval (typically with a reply to the latest
version&#8217;s cover letter). Optionally, you can let the author know that they can
add a "Reviewed-by: &lt;you&gt;" trailer if they resubmit the reviewed patch verbatim
in a later iteration of the series.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Finally, subsequent "What&#8217;s cooking" emails may explicitly ask whether a
reviewed topic is ready for merging to the &#8216;next` branch (typically phrased
"Will merge to 'next&#8217;?"). You can help the maintainer and author by responding
with a short description of the state of your (and others', if applicable)
review, including the links to the relevant thread(s).</p></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_terminology">Terminology</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="dlist"><dl>
<dt class="hdlist1">
nit: 
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        Denotes a small issue that should be fixed, such as a typographical error
        or misalignment of conditions in an <code>if()</code> statement.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
aside: 
</dt>
<dt class="hdlist1">
optional: 
</dt>
<dt class="hdlist1">
non-blocking: 
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        Indicates to the reader that the following comment should not block the
        acceptance of the patch or series. These are typically recommendations
        related to code organization &amp; style, or musings about topics related to
        the patch in question, but beyond its scope.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
s/&lt;before&gt;/&lt;after&gt;/
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        Shorthand for "you wrote &lt;before&gt;, but I think you meant &lt;after&gt;," usually
        for misspellings or other typographical errors. The syntax is a reference
        to "substitute" command commonly found in Unix tools such as <code>ed</code>, <code>sed</code>,
        <code>vim</code>, and <code>perl</code>.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
cover letter
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        The "Patch 0" of a multi-patch series. This email describes the
        high-level intent and structure of the patch series to readers on the
        Git mailing list. It is also where the changelog notes and range-diff of
        subsequent versions are provided by the author.
</p>
<div class="paragraph"><p>On single-patch submissions, cover letter content is typically not sent as a
separate email. Instead, it is inserted between the end of the patch&#8217;s commit
message (after the <code>---</code>) and the beginning of the diff.</p></div>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
#leftoverbits
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
  Used by either an author or a reviewer to describe features or suggested
  changes that are out-of-scope of a given patch or series, but are relevant
  to the topic for the sake of discussion.
</p>
</dd>
</dl></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_see_also">See Also</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p><a href="MyFirstContribution.html">MyFirstContribution</a></p></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="footnotes"><hr /></div>
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<div id="footer-text">
Last updated
 2025-06-13 22:14:31 UTC
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