"Dimitrie O. Paun" dpaun@rogers.com writes:
Most of these things are already followed by most people, with the exception of the inlining bit. Alexandre, what about you reject patches that aren't in this format with a pointer to these rules? All this is a matter of habit, and I think we'll all benefit if these rules are followed.
I don't want to make it a strictly enforced rule, because I think there is a risk of discouraging people, especially occasional contributors. After you have spent hours tracking a bug and writing a patch, it's already hard when the patch is rejected because it's wrong, but if it gets rejected without anybody even looking at it because you didn't use the proper format, that's very discouraging. I think we should try to follow the network rule: be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you accept.
I do admit that it would be nice if frequent contributors could get into the habit of making patches that are easier to read and apply. I'll also note that I tend to deal first with patches that don't require me to do MIME gymnastics, so these are less likely to end up getting forgotten. Maybe that could provide some motivation...