Git diff is able to customize the regex used to locate "function headers", or the text to output on @@ lines of a patch to make it easier to determine which portion of a file the patch touches. This is done by coupling .gitattributes contents with the user running the right 'git config' command. We don't have a bootstrap script, so we don't have an automated place to forcefully ensure the right setup for new contributors, but we can at least document the steps a developer can do to make our lives easier. For the API.ml file, not only do we want to highlight typical top-level OCaml 'let' statements, we also want to highlight the start of each of our API definitions. Thanks: Laszlo Ersek <lersek(a)redhat.com&gt; --- .gitattributes | 3 +++ README | 4 ++++

On Fri, Dec 03, 2021 at 08:44:03AM -0600, Eric Blake wrote: > On Fri, Dec 03, 2021 at 08:35:18AM -0600, Eric Blake wrote: > > Git diff is able to customize the regex used to locate "function > > headers", or the text to output on @@ lines of a patch to make it > > easier to determine which portion of a file the patch touches. This > > is done by coupling .gitattributes contents with the user running the > > right 'git config' command. We don't have a bootstrap script, so we > > don't have an automated place to forcefully ensure the right setup for > > new contributors, but we can at least document the steps a developer > > can do to make our lives easier. > > > > For the API.ml file, not only do we want to highlight typical > > top-level OCaml 'let' statements, we also want to highlight the start > > of each of our API definitions. > > > > Thanks: Laszlo Ersek <lersek(a)redhat.com&gt; > > --- > > .gitattributes | 3 +++ > > README | 4 ++++ ACK patch > Hmm. Should .gitattributes be included or excluded from a tarball? > It's odd to have the tarball mention a file that does not exist if you > aren't using git, but then again, the file has no use outside of git > development. If we do want it in the tarball, it should probably > include a copyright blurb. For comparison, .gitignore has no > copyright blurb, but IS included in our tarball (see > Makefile.am:EXTRA_DIST). It's probably best to put it into the tarball, not least because that way it won't break maintainer-check-extra-dist. Having a 3 line file in the tarball doesn't matter.