Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 18:09:49 -0500 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>, Mike Barcroft <mike@FreeBSD.org> Cc: cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Committer's guide policy on commit message contents Message-ID: <p05101010b829cc2d312b@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1011127163632.20120A-100000@fledge.watson.org> References: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1011127163632.20120A-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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At 4:37 PM -0500 11/27/01, Robert Watson wrote: >On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, 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." > >Ignoring, for a moment, any context -- I think this is actually not a good >policy. In the event that there are complex or large changes being made, >a brief summary of the changes, along with the rationale, is appropriate >in the commit message. At least, that's my feeling :-). Is this >something that would be worth changing? I think the "explaining what you did" means at the level of C code. Ie, a commit message should not say "I changed friprtn() to initialize 'lvl' to zero". That is explaining what you did. It does not explain why you did it. "I fixed the a problem where login will sometimes fail with the message 'index out of range'". That is why you made the change. That's how I have always read it, at least. Reading it again, perhaps it is confusing to say "explaining what you did". After all, if you do say *why* you made the change, then you are in some sense "explaining what you did". Perhaps that should say "listing the lines of code that you changed". -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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