ty: sending automated contributor feedback

B4 makes it easier to send automated developer feedback when you apply patches or pull requests to your git tree.

Tracking retrieved patches and PRs

Any patches or pull requests you retrieve with b4 am,shazam,pr will be automatically tracked by b4 in your homedir (usually, in $HOME/.local/share/b4, but may vary if your $XDG_DATA_HOME is set to a different value). There are four kinds of files in that directory:

.am: contain information about patches retrieved with b4 am or b4 shazam
.pr: contain information about pull requests retrieved with b4 pr
.sent: either .am or .pr tracked files that were successfully sent using b4 ty
.discarded: either .am or .pr tracked files that were deleted using b4 ty

All of these files contain JSON data about the series or pull requests being tracked.

Using the Auto-Thankanator

If you’ve retrieved and applied some patches to your tree, you should be able to fire up the “auto-thankanator”, which uses patch-id and commit subject tracking to figure out which series from those you have retrieved were applied to your tree. The process is usually pretty fast and fairly accurate.

Manually listing and thanking

If you don’t want to use the auto-thankanator, or if it’s not finding a patch series (e.g. because you’ve made changes to a commit before applying it to your tree), you can use a more manual process. First, list all tracked series:

$ b4 ty -l

Identify the series that you’re sure got applied, then generate the thank-you message:

$ b4 ty -t 1

This will write out a .thanks file in the current directory, which you can then modify and send out.

Sending out mail vs. writing .thanks files

By default, b4 ty will write out .thanks files in the current directory, which allows you to edit the body of the message before sending it out, e.g. using mutt:

$ mutt -f foo.thanks

However, if you have a configured sendemail section, you can also tell b4 to send out the thanks message directly:

$ b4 ty -aS --dry-run

The above command will locate all tracked series that got applied to your tree and show the messages that are going to be sent out. If you’re happy with the results, you can omit the --dry-run switch to actually send the mail.

If you want b4 ty to always send mail, you can make the -S switch permanent by setting the b4.ty-send-email config variable to yes.

Editing the templates

You can edit the default templates that are provided with b4 to customize the thank-you message. Once you have your own versions, you can specify the path to the template to use via the b4.thanks_am_template and b4.thanks_pr_template configuration parameters. See ty settings for details.

Optional flags

-g GITDIR, --gitdir GITDIR: The git tree to use instead of the current working directory.
-o OUTDIR, --outdir OUTDIR: Where to write the .thanks files if not into the current directory. Has no effect when -S is used.
-l, --list: Lists all tracked patch series and pull requests.
-t THANKFOR, --thank-for THANKFOR: From the listing generated by --list, specify which thank-you notes should be sent. This command accepts comma-separated values and ranges, including open-ended ranges, e.g.: -t 1,3,5-7,9-. It also accepts all.
-d DISCARD, --discard DISCARD: From the listing generated by --list, specify which thank-you notes should be discarded. This command accepts comma-separated values and ranges, including open-ended ranges, e.g.: -t 1,3,5-7,9-. It also accepts all.
-a, --auto: The auto-thankanator: uses patch-id and commit subject matching to figure out which tracked series or pull request have been applied to your tree.
-b BRANCH, --branch BRANCH: When using --auto, specify which git branch should be used if not the currently active branch.
--since SINCE: When using --auto, this lets you adjust how far back b4 will look to find your own commits. Takes the same format as --since flags passed to git, with the default of 1.week.
-S, --send-email: Instead of writing .thanks files, send the email directly. Requires that the sendemail section is present in your git configuration.
--dry-run: When used with -S, will not actually send email, just print them out to stdout.
--pw-set-state PW_SET_STATE: When patchwork integration is configured, sets the specified patchwork state instead of the default specified in config settings (use with -a, -t or -d). See Patchwork integration settings for more details.