[ovs-dev] Cover letters (was Re: [PATCH 0/7] Add OVS DPDK keep-alive functionality)

[Ben Pfaff]

On Mon, May 01, 2017 at 04:45:56PM -0400, Aaron Conole wrote:
> Ben Pfaff <blp at ovn.org> writes:
> ...
> > I think it'd be even better to include measurements in one of the commit
> > messages, because those are available in the repository after the
> > patches are applied.  It's harder to find cover letters because they're
> > only on the mailing list.
> 
> One thing that other projects do to keep the cover letters is to create
> a branch, apply all the patches from the series, and then create a merge
> commit, with the commit message as the cover letter.  It can make the
> history a bit messier, but means that the cover letter is retained, and
> makes 'git bisect' work quite a bit better (because bisect knows how to
> skip merged trees appropriately).  It could be worth doing, because it
> can help to explain an overall motivation for a series when walking the
> tree with git annotations.

I wouldn't object to that, for well-organized series.

Is there a way to automate applying a branch like this from email?  Or
is it better to do them as pull requests (whether via email or Github)?