From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Eric S. Raymond" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Commit practices Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:32:44 -0500 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Message-ID: <20071229183244.GA23998@thyrsus.com> References: <20071229141014.3364A2C83DC@grelber.thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1198953251 5320 80.91.229.12 (29 Dec 2007 18:34:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:34:11 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Dec 29 19:34:24 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1J8gVs-0000cJ-CP for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:34:24 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1J8gVR-0004Fl-U9 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:33:58 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1J8gUG-00033d-CM for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:32:44 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1J8gUE-000324-If for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:32:43 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1J8gUE-00031t-8h for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:32:42 -0500 Original-Received: from static-71-162-243-5.phlapa.fios.verizon.net ([71.162.243.5] helo=snark.thyrsus.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1J8gUE-0004sj-07 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:32:42 -0500 Original-Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 23) id 7C338830B9A; Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:32:44 -0500 (EST) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20071229141014.3364A2C83DC@grelber.thyrsus.com> X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.15+20070412 (2007-04-11) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:85631 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii : > I once posted a summary that I know about; see: > > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-11/msg00229.html > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-11/msg00234.html > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-11/msg00312.html > > Richard commented here, basically approving my summary: > > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-11/msg00276.html > > I suggested at the time to have these guidelines under admin/ but I > guess no one volunteered to do that yet. I had certainly never seen these guidelines before. I may have been violating them a lot recently simply because of the way VC-mode now works. Because VC now does group commits, I have been using the following style: (1) Make a coherent group of changes. (2) Write Changelog text describing them. (3) Do a group commit, *including the Changelog*. In the comment buffer, paste the text I wrote in step 2, tab-stripped. I did it this way for a reason. Someday we are going to want to migrate the CVS tree to a VCS that has real changesets. We're almost certainly going to do it with a tool functionally like cvs2svn that tries to reconstruct commit groups using date, the content of the comments, and possibly this Commit-ID thing I see in the CVS logs. It will be helpful, when we do that, if there as many similarities across related commits as possible for the migration tool to grab onto. This brings up the large topic of what to do about our workflow, our tools, and the sad fact that Eli's guidelines (while intelligent in their way) are basically an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. What we should really do is stop kissing the damned pig. But that's a topic for another thread, which I'll start with my next post. -- Eric S. Raymond