Welcome to GitGitGadget

Hi @h8d13, and welcome to GitGitGadget, the GitHub App to send patch series to the Git mailing list from GitHub Pull Requests.

Please make sure that either:

• Your Pull Request has a good description, if it consists of multiple commits, as it will be used as cover letter.
• Your Pull Request description is empty, if it consists of a single commit, as the commit message should be descriptive enough by itself.

You can CC potential reviewers by adding a footer to the PR description with the following syntax:

CC: Revi Ewer <revi.ewer@example.com>, Ill Takalook <ill.takalook@example.net>

NOTE: DO NOT copy/paste your CC list from a previous GGG PR's description,
because it will result in a malformed CC list on the mailing list. See
example.

Also, it is a good idea to review the commit messages one last time, as the Git project expects them in a quite specific form:

• the lines should not exceed 76 columns,
• the first line should be like a header and typically start with a prefix like "tests:" or "revisions:" to state which subsystem the change is about, and
• the commit messages' body should be describing the "why?" of the change.
• Finally, the commit messages should end in a Signed-off-by: line matching the commits' author.

It is in general a good idea to await the automated test ("Checks") in this Pull Request before contributing the patches, e.g. to avoid trivial issues such as unportable code.

Contributing the patches

Before you can contribute the patches, your GitHub username needs to be added to the list of permitted users. Any already-permitted user can do that, by adding a comment to your PR of the form /allow. A good way to find other contributors is to locate recent pull requests where someone has been /allowed:

• Search: is:pr is:open "/allow"

Both the person who commented /allow and the PR author are able to /allow you.

An alternative is the channel #git-devel on the Libera Chat IRC network:

<newcontributor> I've just created my first PR, could someone please /allow me? https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/12345
<veteran> newcontributor: it is done
<newcontributor> thanks!

Once on the list of permitted usernames, you can contribute the patches to the Git mailing list by adding a PR comment /submit.

If you want to see what email(s) would be sent for a /submit request, add a PR comment /preview to have the email(s) sent to you. You must have a public GitHub email address for this. Note that any reviewers CC'd via the list in the PR description will not actually be sent emails.

After you submit, GitGitGadget will respond with another comment that contains the link to the cover letter mail in the Git mailing list archive. Please make sure to monitor the discussion in that thread and to address comments and suggestions (while the comments and suggestions will be mirrored into the PR by GitGitGadget, you will still want to reply via mail).

If you do not want to subscribe to the Git mailing list just to be able to respond to a mail, you can download the mbox from the Git mailing list archive (click the (raw) link), then import it into your mail program. If you use GMail, you can do this via:

curl -g --user "<EMailAddress>:<Password>" \
    --url "imaps://imap.gmail.com/INBOX" -T /path/to/raw.txt

To iterate on your change, i.e. send a revised patch or patch series, you will first want to (force-)push to the same branch. You probably also want to modify your Pull Request description (or title). It is a good idea to summarize the revision by adding something like this to the cover letter (read: by editing the first comment on the PR, i.e. the PR description):

Changes since v1:
- Fixed a typo in the commit message (found by ...)
- Added a code comment to ... as suggested by ...
...

To send a new iteration, just add another PR comment with the contents: /submit.

Need help?

New contributors who want advice are encouraged to join git-mentoring@googlegroups.com, where volunteers who regularly contribute to Git are willing to answer newbie questions, give advice, or otherwise provide mentoring to interested contributors. You must join in order to post or view messages, but anyone can join.

You may also be able to find help in real time in the developer IRC channel, #git-devel on Libera Chat. Remember that IRC does not support offline messaging, so if you send someone a private message and log out, they cannot respond to you. The scrollback of #git-devel is archived, though.

/allow

User h8d13 is now allowed to use GitGitGadget.

WARNING: h8d13 has no public email address set on GitHub; GitGitGadget needs an email address to Cc: you on your contribution, so that you receive any feedback on the Git mailing list. Go to https://github.com/settings/profile to make your preferred email public to let GitGitGadget know which email address to use.

/submit

Submitted as pull.2333.git.git.1781314780645.gitgitgadget@gmail.com

To fetch this version into FETCH_HEAD:

git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/ pr-git-2333/h8d13/depth-env-v1

To fetch this version to local tag pr-git-2333/h8d13/depth-env-v1:

git fetch --no-tags https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/ tag pr-git-2333/h8d13/depth-env-v1

"Matt Hunter" wrote on the Git mailing list (how to reply to this email):

On Fri Jun 12, 2026 at 9:39 PM EDT, h8d13 via GitGitGadget wrote:
> @@ -1022,6 +1022,12 @@ int cmd_clone(int argc,
>  		usage_msg_opt(_("You must specify a repository to clone."),
>  			builtin_clone_usage, builtin_clone_options);
>  
> +	if (!option_depth) {
> +		const char *env_depth = getenv("DEPTH");

Nearly all of the non-standard environment variables used by git start
with "GIT_".  "GIT_CLONE_DEPTH" may be a better choice.

> +		if (env_depth && *env_depth)
> +			option_depth = xstrdup(env_depth);

Following normal command-line option parsing, if --depth is given, then
option_depth points to the parsed string from cmd_clone's argv array
directly and is not freed.  Therefore, the string copy returned via
xstrdup also goes unfreed before it is lost.

One might argue this isn't very impactful, since we would expect the
process to exit after git-clone completes, but there are already several
explicit calls to free and related functions at the end of cmd_clone.
> +	}
> +
>  	if (option_depth || option_since || option_not.nr)
>  		deepen = 1;
>  	if (option_single_branch == -1)
>
> base-commit: 3e65291872de10c3f0bf05ea8c24187e7a71ebf0

User "Matt Hunter" <m@lfurio.us> has been added to the cc: list.

There are issues in commit d4c3989:
chore(fb): rename env var.

• Commit checks stopped - the message is too short
• Commit not signed off

When renaming the var and adding tests, please squash those changes into the first commit and revise its message (which also mentions DEPTH) to account for the rename.

There are issues in commit 21f8b0e:
chore(fb): Message-ID: <DJ7MJMIFZR5N.2SG1RWB46WPQB@lfurio.us>

• Prefixed commit message must be in lower case
• Commit not signed off

@davvid did just that :) thanks again for the tips.

One might argue this isn't very impactful, since we would expect the
process to exit after git-clone completes, but there are already several
explicit calls to free and related functions at the end of cmd_clone.

In PKGBUILD the common case is;

git clone --depth 1 <url> <dest>
cd dest
bash run.sh
# here run.sh has its own clone dependencies (perhaps even multiple)
# --depth 1 is now lost

Hopefully that explains better the need

One might argue this isn't very impactful, since we would expect the
process to exit after git-clone completes, but there are already several
explicit calls to free and related functions at the end of cmd_clone.

In PKGBUILD the common case is;

git clone --depth 1 <url> <dest>
cd dest
bash run.sh
# here run.sh has its own clone dependencies (perhaps even multiple)
# --depth 1 is now lost

Hopefully that explains better the need

Just so you know, the ones on the mailing list (including the maintainer) won't be able to see what you write here. Development discussions happen on the mailing list.

Sry I have newer used a mailing list 😀

I was hoping this satanic bot would transmit the info

Sry I have newer used a mailing list 😀

I was hoping this satanic bot would transmit the info

@h8d13 That's quite an interesting way to show gratitude for the amount of effort that was put into GitGitGadget, for the effort trying to make contributing patches to the Git mailing list less of a challenge. Quite revealing.

Sorry I meant that as a joke, because of the needs signature and commit format rules, etc, I learned a few new git tricks along the way -s notably :)

Junio C Hamano wrote on the Git mailing list (how to reply to this email):

"Matt Hunter" <m@lfurio.us> writes:

> On Fri Jun 12, 2026 at 9:39 PM EDT, h8d13 via GitGitGadget wrote:
>> @@ -1022,6 +1022,12 @@ int cmd_clone(int argc,
>>  		usage_msg_opt(_("You must specify a repository to clone."),
>>  			builtin_clone_usage, builtin_clone_options);
>>  
>> +	if (!option_depth) {
>> +		const char *env_depth = getenv("DEPTH");
>
> Nearly all of the non-standard environment variables used by git start
> with "GIT_".  "GIT_CLONE_DEPTH" may be a better choice.

Isn't it sufficient to add a new configuration variable in the
clone.* namespace?  Unless there is a reason why it does not work, I
won't accept a patch that adds a random environment support like
this.  We do not want to end up having to add other random
environment variables like GIT_CLONE_DEFAULTREMOTENAME,
CLONE_REJECTSHALLOW, CLONE_FILTERSUBMODULES for consistency.

Does replying in email to gitgitgadget@gmail.com suffice ? @Mroik

Sorry I'm very confused with this mailing list stuff

Does replying in email to gitgitgadget@gmail.com suffice ? @Mroik

Sorry I'm very confused with this mailing list stuff

You should've received all the emails that are sent to the mailing list regarding this topic, you should be able to find them in your inbox (hadean-eon-dev@proton.me) as GitGitGadget cc's everything to you.

To participate in the discussion you can simply hit "reply-all" to the email you want to reply to, in your email client of choice (or webclient if you access email from a web browser). It's important that you hit "reply-all" and not "reply" or "reply-list", not everyone that participate in the discussion is subscribed to the mailing list.

I sense that you haven't read the guidelines/contribution guide before trying to submit a patch, if so I invite you to give it a read: https://git-scm.com/docs/MyFirstContribution

Thanks I think I've managed to do it. 📬

Will catch-up on some reading lol

But it was not working from proton for some reason.

But it was not working from proton for some reason.

@h8d13 Hope this tutorial could help you a little bit. ;-)

https://useplaintext.email/#protonmail

But it seems you have to wrap your email manually if using protonmail.

Thanks @bertyuan :=)
Seems to work now. Replid on thread https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqeciafowq.fsf@gitster.g/T/#u

@h8d13 Congrats!

You may check your email client. Logically speaking, if you reply to all in an email, the email header In-Reply-To will be automatically added.

The maintainer often uses b4 to pull iterations from the mailing list. If In-Reply-To header is missing, he might meet problems when pulling. So next time when sending your v2, it'd be a better choice to check all these works fine ;-)

Header as in: content first line or subject itself.

When I use the mail-to I see Re: [PATCH] ...

Then I should be adding as first line:

In-Reply-To: ID@domain

?

Sorry this very new 😅😅😅

Take Junio's as an example:

It has From/To/Cc/Subject/Date/Message-ID/In-Reply-To, these are all called headers (less rigorously speaking)

And yours:

Missing In-Reply-To, so it cannot be recognized as a thread for archiving.

But as I just said, if you click "Reply all" to reply, this problem should not occur here. I haven't seen Gmail having any problems here.

If you are doing this way,

I'm afraid your MUA doesn't support setting that header ;-)

Yeah that waht I was doing aha. And it seems to not have the correct In-Reply-To:

So if I add it in the content first line that works ?

So if I add it in the content first line that works ?

I dunno. I guess that doesn't work.

As far as I know, if your MUA supports editing headers, you can add the header in the raw file.

Here it says "Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body." I don't know how about In-Reply-To, maybe you could have a try by sending an email to yourself ;-) I don't know much about emails though.