Re: ChangeLog/commit messages

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 05:06:09PM +0200, Thomas Schwinge wrote:

> On the other hand, comments such as Olaf's quoted above (``Instead of
> [...]'') should in fact not be put into the ChangeLog/commit message,
> but should be put (in a slightly altered form, of course) into the
> code itself: to describe the logic/where the 10000 constant is coming
> from.

Well, that's what the GCS says... But it's one of the portions of GCS I
do not entirely agree this. Of course code should come with comments
explaining it -- but I don't think the particular line I changed here
needs much explanation. (Though the formatting code could do with a bit
more explanation in general I guess...)

Note that my explanation in the commit message is mostly about why I
found the *previous* code not to be optimal... It would be rather
inappropriate to put it next to the new code IMHO.

The commit message on the other hand is where people generally look when
they want to understand *why* things changed. That's where such
explanations are useful.

Note that with the exception of a few old GNU programs, pretty much
*every* project I ever looked at follows this approach -- including huge
ones such as Linux or X.Org.

> (Olaf, as you've already seen, this does give me the power to assign
> Savannah tasks to you.)  ;-P

And as I'm a volunteer, I retain the power to ignore this ;-P

-antrik-