Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

[Karl Fogel]

Our commit diff emails currently have subject lines like this:

"[Emacs-diffs] /srv/bzr/emacs/trunk r99318: Fix gc bug in terminal allocation."

They would be better like this, I think:

"[Emacs-diffs] r99318: Fix gc bug in terminal allocation."

The "/srv/bzr/emacs/trunk" is pretty much wasted space.  Do we even send
commit emails for other branches?  I don't know, but if we don't, then
there's no need to take up space saying the branch; and if we do, then
we could just say "trunk" or "foo" without the "/srv/bzr/emacs/" prefix.

Meanwhile, in the message body, adding some vertical whitepace would
make improve readability.  I'll mark my suggestions below with "###":

  revno: 99318
  committer: Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>
  branch nick: trunk
  timestamp: Wed 2010-01-13 13:35:36 -0500
  message:
    Fix gc bug in terminal allocation.
    
    * xterm.c (x_term_init): Avoid garbage-collecting the new terminal
    during call to vendor-specific-keysyms (Bug#5365).
  ### How about a blank line here?  Currently there is not one. ###
  modified:
    src/ChangeLog
    src/xterm.c
  ### And how about a blank line here?  Currently there is not one. ###
  === modified file 'src/ChangeLog'
  --- a/src/ChangeLog	2010-01-13 04:42:45 +0000
  +++ b/src/ChangeLog	2010-01-13 18:35:36 +0000
  ### After this point, there are blank lines between hunks, so all good ##

I don't know what would be involved in fixing these problems.  I presume
a Savannah support request for at least the first, and either a Savannah
SR and/or a patch to some Bazaar tool for the latter.

If people agree that these would be good, I (might :-) ) take a look.

Thoughts?

-Karl

Re: Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> writes:

  > Our commit diff emails currently have subject lines like this:
  > 
  > "[Emacs-diffs] /srv/bzr/emacs/trunk r99318: Fix gc bug in terminal allocation."
  > 
  > They would be better like this, I think:
  > 
  > "[Emacs-diffs] r99318: Fix gc bug in terminal allocation."
  > 
  > The "/srv/bzr/emacs/trunk" is pretty much wasted space.  Do we even send

So is [Emacs-diffs]

Re: Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

[Glenn Morris]

Karl Fogel wrote:

> Do we even send commit emails for other branches?

Not usually, but sometimes. Eg for a branch like EMACS_23_1_RC:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-06/msg00389.html

Here you can set the subject format that CVS used:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-diffs/2009-07/index.html

Trunk was implicit, [EMACS_23_1_RC] was placed at the end when
appropriate.


For the purposes of Gnus scoring, I found it more useful when the
subject line contained the changed files. But this doesn't scale to
multi-file commits anyway.

Re: Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

[Glenn Morris]

Glenn Morris wrote:

> Here you can set the subject format that CVS used:
               ^^^
see

> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-diffs/2009-07/index.html

Re: Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

[Karl Fogel]

Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:
>Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> writes:
>  > Our commit diff emails currently have subject lines like this:
>  > 
>  > "[Emacs-diffs] /srv/bzr/emacs/trunk r99318: Fix gc bug in terminal allocation."
>  > 
>  > They would be better like this, I think:
>  > 
>  > "[Emacs-diffs] r99318: Fix gc bug in terminal allocation."
>  > 
>  > The "/srv/bzr/emacs/trunk" is pretty much wasted space.  Do we even send
>
>So is [Emacs-diffs]

Yes -- I'd *love* to get rid of that too, but I'm so accustomed to
losing that battle on other forums that I didn't even bother to suggest
it here.  But if we have rough consensus that the "[Emacs-diffs]" is
unnecessary, let's ditch it!

Re: Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

[Glenn Morris]

Dan Nicolaescu wrote:

> So is [Emacs-diffs]

I think that's a Mailman option that the list owner (Eli) could unset.

(I read it via Gmane, which seems to strip that prefix. I never missed it.)

Re: Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Cc: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:26:18 -0500
> 
> Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
> 
> > So is [Emacs-diffs]
> 
> I think that's a Mailman option

That's true.

> that the list owner (Eli) could unset.

I will do that if there's consensus to get rid of it.

Re: Better subjects, bodies for commit diff emails?

[Karl Fogel]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
>> Cc: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
>> Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:26:18 -0500
>> 
>> Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
>> 
>> > So is [Emacs-diffs]
>> 
>> I think that's a Mailman option
>
>That's true.
>
>> that the list owner (Eli) could unset.
>
>I will do that if there's consensus to get rid of it.

Well, +1 here...