What's your idea?
Automate patch naming during the upload process so that users wishing to contribute a patch may upload a file of any name and it will automatically be rewritten and saved to Drupal.org servers following the correct convention.
Interdiffs could be created automatically as well. A user could check "Automatically create interdiff" and one would be created against the last uploaded patch. Or the user could select any previously uploaded patch to create one against. If, for whatever reason, one can't be created automatically, continue uploading the patch and indicate that there was an issue and an interdiff should be created and uploaded manually.
What are the benefits?
Consistent and correctly named patches.
Automatic interdiffs for every subsequent patch.
Easier for new contributors to start submitting patches since creating an interdiff is often a troublesome step.
Reduce number of unnecessary tests.
What are the risks?
Automatically replacing the [short-description] token could be tricky.
Automatically creating interdiffs might not be possible in all cases.
How can we measure the impact of this idea? (metrics)
Consistency of patch names.
The number of submitted interdiffs.
Who directly benefits from / will use this improvement? (target audiences)
Developers, patch testers, new contributors that are unfamiliar with how to create an interdiff and those that are unaware of the "do-not-test" convention.
Are additional resources available for discovery/implementation? (volunteer effort, financial backing, etc.)
To be determined...
Comments
While I'm less sure of "Also,
While I'm less sure of "Also, add a check box to specify if a patch is to be marked with "do-not-test"" (we don't really need to clutter that interface more than it already is, IMO; this is like a 1% use case.. maybe something for Dreditor?), the rest (auto-naming and auto-interdiffs) would certainly eliminate an awful lot of busy work from the Drupal core queue, as well as make reviewing patches much easier.
Agreed, the "do-not-test"
Agreed, the "do-not-test" feature is seldom used and probably not worth the clutter. I revised my original post and removed that part.
Per issue repos would solve
Per issue repos would solve this problem, being able to step through the progress of an issue would be great. I'm not sure if that fits here or is a separate suggestion.
Yeah, definitely a separate
Yeah, definitely a separate suggestion.
What's suggested here would just be a few lines of code on hook_comment_submit() or whatever. Per-issue repos are a whole 'nother ball of wax. :)
Interesting. See also this
Interesting. See also this comment https://groups.drupal.org/node/312978#comment-952998 which talks about a Drush extension for managing patches. Could be very similar to what's proposed here, though of course this would affect everyone not just those who use Drush and know about said extension.
Dreditor has recently
Dreditor has recently included a "Patchname suggestion" link in the comment form. This makes it easier to get a consistent filename even before uploading.