While "git am" can apply an mbox file containing multiple patches (e.g.
as created by b4[1], or a patch bundle downloaded from patchwork),
checkpatch does not have proper support for that. When operating on an
mbox, checkpatch will merge all detected tags, and complain falsely
about duplicates:
WARNING: Duplicate signature
As modifying checkpatch to reset state in between each patch is a lot of
work, a simple solution is splitting the mbox into individual patches,
and invoking checkpatch for each of them. Fortunately checkpatch can read
a patch from stdin, so the classic "formail" tool can be used to split
the mbox, and pipe all individual patches to checkpatch:
formail -s scripts/checkpatch.pl < my-mbox
However, when reading a patch file from standard input, checkpatch calls
it "Your patch", and reports its state as:
Your patch has style problems, please review.
or:
Your patch has no obvious style problems and is ready for submission.
Hence it can be difficult to identify which patches need to be reviewed
and improved.
Fix this by replacing "Your patch" by (the first line of) the email
subject, if present.
Note that "git mailsplit" can also be used to split an mbox, but it will
create individual files for each patch, thus requiring cleanup
afterwards. Formail does not have this disadvantage.
[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/b4/b4.git
Signed-off-by: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert+rene...@glider.be>
---
v2:
- Add more rationale,
- Refer to the new b4 tool.
---
scripts/checkpatch.pl | 4 ++++
1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
diff --git a/scripts/checkpatch.pl b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
index eac40f0abd56a9f4..3355358697d9e790 100755
--- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
+++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
@@ -1057,6 +1057,10 @@ for my $filename (@ARGV) {
}
while (<$FILE>) {
chomp;
+ if ($vname eq 'Your patch') {
+ my ($subject) = $_ =~ /^Subject:\s*(.*)/;
+ $vname = '"' . $subject . '"' if $subject;
+ }
push(@rawlines, $_);
}
close($FILE);
--
2.17.1
