Re: Metaproblem, part 3

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 16:54:26 -0500
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden
> 
> Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>:
> > Every commit should come with a commit message, yes.
> > And every commit message should use the ChangeLog format (plus
> > a summary if appropriate).
> > And every commit message should be duplicated in the ChangeLog file.
> 
> But Paul Eggert said: "It's not needed for one-liners."

Yes, a single one line ChangeLog-style entry can serve also as a
summary for itself.

> So not only do we have commenting conventions that are duplicative,
> fussy, and undocumented, the senior developers seem not to agree on the
> details.
> 
> Hello?  Hello?  Am I the only one that sees a problem here?

There is no problem, see above.

> I've been hacking on Emacs since before it was GNU Emacs and now *I*
> feel like I'm walking on eggshells and the overhead of contributing is
> irritatingly high.  How much more forbidding do you suppose it is for
> J. Random Junior Hacker?

They usually get told once, or even just read the previous commit log
messages and understand the style by themselves.

> Put differently: #emacs has over 500 regulars.  It appears to me that
> no more than a dozen, if that, have contributed a line of code to the
> development tree.  Does nobody in the project leadership ever think
> about what that implies?

We do.  I do.

> My next commit will be me diligently attempting to comply with
> Stefan's instruction.  And thinking that a hell of a lot besides the
> version-control system needs to change around here.

I agree.  The question, as always, is what should change and in what
ways.  "The devil is in the details."