SubmittingPatches: document the use of git

Most of the mechanical portions of SubmittingPatches exist to help patch
submitters replicate the output of git.  Mention this explicitly, both
as a reminder that git will help with this process, and as signposting
to let git users know what they can safely skip.

Signed-off-by: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Acked-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Cc: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 16 insertions, 15 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/SubmittingPatches b/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
index 53e6590263a..fdad7d19706 100644
--- a/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
+++ b/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
@@ -14,7 +14,10 @@ Read Documentation/SubmitChecklist for a list of items to check
 before submitting code.  If you are submitting a driver, also read
 Documentation/SubmittingDrivers.
 
-
+Many of these steps describe the default behavior of the git version
+control system; if you use git to prepare your patches, you'll find much
+of the mechanical work done for you, though you'll still need to prepare
+and document a sensible set of patches.
 
 --------------------------------------------
 SECTION 1 - CREATING AND SENDING YOUR CHANGE
@@ -25,7 +28,9 @@ SECTION 1 - CREATING AND SENDING YOUR CHANGE
 1) "diff -up"
 ------------
 
-Use "diff -up" or "diff -uprN" to create patches.
+Use "diff -up" or "diff -uprN" to create patches.  git generates patches
+in this form by default; if you're using git, you can skip this section
+entirely.
 
 All changes to the Linux kernel occur in the form of patches, as
 generated by diff(1).  When creating your patch, make sure to create it
@@ -66,19 +71,14 @@ Make sure your patch does not include any extra files which do not
 belong in a patch submission.  Make sure to review your patch -after-
 generated it with diff(1), to ensure accuracy.
 
-If your changes produce a lot of deltas, you may want to look into
-splitting them into individual patches which modify things in
-logical stages.  This will facilitate easier reviewing by other
-kernel developers, very important if you want your patch accepted.
-There are a number of scripts which can aid in this:
-
-Quilt:
-http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt
+If your changes produce a lot of deltas, you need to split them into
+individual patches which modify things in logical stages; see section
+#3.  This will facilitate easier reviewing by other kernel developers,
+very important if you want your patch accepted.
 
-Andrew Morton's patch scripts:
-http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/stuff/patch-scripts.tar.gz
-Instead of these scripts, quilt is the recommended patch management
-tool (see above).
+If you're using git, "git rebase -i" can help you with this process.  If
+you're not using git, quilt <http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt>
+is another popular alternative.
 
 
 
@@ -607,7 +607,8 @@ patch.
 If you are going to include a diffstat after the "---" marker, please
 use diffstat options "-p 1 -w 70" so that filenames are listed from
 the top of the kernel source tree and don't use too much horizontal
-space (easily fit in 80 columns, maybe with some indentation).
+space (easily fit in 80 columns, maybe with some indentation).  (git
+generates appropriate diffstats by default.)
 
 See more details on the proper patch format in the following
 references.