Re: Commit netiquette.

[Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 15:45, Alfred M. Szmidt <ams@gnu.org> wrote:

> This seems more of a short comming in `bzr log --short' than in the
> way one writes commit messages.  A commit message is more than a
> single line.  And the purpose of a change is always more suitable in
> the actual code as a comment.

You're conflating quite different things. If I update my tree with
"bzr up", obviously I'm not going to go looking at the code to know
which changes were made, but I certainly will do "bzr log --line -l10"
to see recent changes and their purpose.

And it is ridiculous to say that it is a "shortcoming" of log --short.
--short or --line are a convenience; making sure that the first line
of the commit log summarizes the change is just being nice to fellow
developers. You can always see the full log if you want; is not like
following the recommendation somehow impedes you from writing as long
a commit message as you want.

We currently *have* policies about ChangeLog entries and commit logs,
so I agree with Óscar: it is a good practice and we should require
people to follow it; and treat people who doesn't the same way we
treat people who mangles ChangeLog entries (that is, a gentle but firm
reminder that we have guideliness and we're all expected to follow
them).

    Juanma