Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 14:13:52 -0800 (PST) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Josef Karthauser <joe@tao.org.uk> Cc: cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, des@FreeBSD.org, Maxim Sobolev <sobomax@FreeBSD.org>, Mike Barcroft <mike@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: Meaningless commit messages [was: cvs commit: ports/www/linu Message-ID: <XFMail.011127141352.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <20011127214156.D32325@tao.org.uk>
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On 27-Nov-01 Josef Karthauser wrote: > On Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 04:35:13PM -0500, Mike Barcroft wrote: >> >> >From the Committers Guide: >> "Do not waste space in the commit messages explaining what you did. >> That is what cvs diff is for. Instead, tell us why you did it." >> > > The "what" is important too, the "how" can be read from the patch, but > the "what" may not be obvious. Saying why you did something also doesn't provide a means for people to have their interests piqued by a change so that they go review it after the fact. It's nice to be able to read cvs log on a file to see what has happened to teh file in its history. Often times when leaping back through histories by following a line via cvs annotate, I like being able to just read the log message to understand the change than having to read every single diff. Log messages are useful not just the one time they appear in the mailing list, but in the future when people come back to examine it later on, possibly after the original committer has moved on. Verbose log messages are good as they don't go away. > Joe -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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