Patch Series

ELI5 - The Vibe Check

A patch series is the original stacked diffs, from back before pull requests existed: a numbered sequence of standalone patch files, each one a self-contained commit, submitted in order for review one at a time. Linux kernel development still runs almost entirely this way. It looks ancient next to a PR button, but it forces exactly the kind of small, reviewable, single-purpose commits that a lot of modern teams are now paying tools money to recreate.

Real Talk

A patch series is an ordered set of individual patches, typically generated with git format-patch and applied with git am, representing a logical sequence of changes submitted for review as discrete, independently reviewable units, historically via a mailing list rather than a web based pull request. Projects like the Linux kernel and Git itself still use this workflow, and it directly predates and inspired the stacked diffs pattern used by web native PR tooling.

Show Me The Code

$ git format-patch main --cover-letter -o patches/
$ git am patches/0001-fix-null-check.patch

When You'll Hear This

"The kernel still reviews everything as a patch series over the mailing list." / "Format-patch and git am, no pull request required."