A backport is a replica of an existing commit applied to a different repository. In most cases the backport commit will be applied to repository representing an older release, for example creating a backport of a commit in the jdk repository for the jdk11u-dev repository. Skara features support to ease both creating and reviewing backport commits.
Commit Message
All backport commits features an additional commit message trailer (a line in the last paragraph of the commit message) - Backport-of. The Backport-of trailer describes which commit the backport commit was created from. The following commit message shows an example:
8123456: This is a bug This commit fixes a tricky bug. Reviewed-by: duke Backport-of: 5a526c1c5716f6d9a7fc94741bcdb2f424d342df
In the example commit message above it can be seen that the backport commit fixes the bug JDK-8123456, has the summary "This commit fixes a tricky bug" and that the backport commit was reviewed by "duke". The Backport-of trailer shows that the backport commit is a replica of the commit with hash 5a526c1c5716f6d9a7fc94741bcdb2f424d342df.