Re: trunk r115265: * lisp/vc/vc-dispatcher.el (vc-log-edit): Setup the Summary&Author headers.

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> The intention was to remind people that they should think about who's
>> the author.  Indeed, it's particularly useful for us but less so for
>> many other projects.
> Isn't it too late to remind when the log-edit buffer is open? Normally, you
> create ChangeLog entries first (and they should include the right author),
> only then open the vc-dir buffer, mark the files and then see the
> log-edit buffer.

I think of this "reminding" as a process rather than a one-time event,
so I'm not too worried about it being "too late".
It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing, I think.

>> Maybe we can set it as a .dir-locals.el customization.
> It would be better, but since dir-locals overrides personal customizations,
> it wouldn't be ideal either, as far as I'm concerned.

Having an extra empty "Author:" field might hurt your aesthetic
sensibility, but I don't see how it could be really harmful, so I think
it's perfectly OK even if it's hard to override (and of course, it can
still be overridden, if you're sufficiently motivated).

>> The RFC822 format does add features, since there are a few other special
>> headers (Author, Fixes, Amend, maybe a few more).
> True.  But is it relevant to the question of whether to include the Summary
> and Author headers by default?

What would you include, instead?

> Another problem with Summary, I believe, is that it's often unused in Emacs
> commit messages.

IIUC that's a problem in Emacs's commit messages, not in vc-log-edit,
and the presence of the "Summary:" header might actually encourage
people to change their habit.

>> We should also use some of the message-mode commands to move inside the
>> header, as was suggested here recently.
> Not sure which thread, or which commands you mean.  But `C-e' works well
> enough for moving after "Summary:".

C-a could move to "right after the :".

>> Indeed, that needs to be fixed.  It's easy to fix when we kill the
>> *vc-log* buffer, but it might be trickier to fix when you just
>> bury-it :(
> Since bury-buffer doesn't have a default binding in log-edit, I think that's
> not much of a problem. But we can follow Magit's (and message-mode's)
> example and create a command that would do the burying the smart way (and
> bind it to C-c C-k).

Sounds good.

>> Maybe log-edit-show-files shouldn't be in the default log-edit-hook.
> I'd rather we fix it than hide it.

OK.

> Another approach would be to instead of creating a separate buffer and
> window, output its text at the bottom of the log-edit buffer.  And
> either make it a read-only-not-real text, or comment it out somehow
> and remove that section before the commit is made.

These could work as well, indeed.


        Stefan