Re: git history tracking across renames (and emacs support)

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-07-11, at 05:32, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:

>> Anecdotally, every time I want to make a larger commit with a lot of
>> items, it feels to me like paperwork for its own sake and takes up a
>> long time.

I feel exactly the same.

> It usually takes me a few seconds per change, so I don't see why you
> feel like that.

I think Ted feels like that for a similar reason I do.  If you do your
contributions at least, say, three times a week, you just remember the
way (and Emacs commands to achieve the desired result).  Do it once
every month (or more rarely), and you're completely stuck every time.

>  . How do you explain in CONTRIBUTE what should and what shouldn't be
>    in a log message?  We have trouble getting contributors to follow
>    the current format; this one will leave us no levers to ask them to
>    do it correctly, I think.  The same situation exists with comments,
>    but comments we can fix by followup commits, whereas log messages
>    are carved in stone once pushed.

I don't think CONTRIBUTE is very clear on how to actually make your
commit message comply with the standards anyway.

I could try to make some simple change to see where the friction is so
that CONTRIBUTE can be made better, or even create a detailed technical
HOWTO explaining the steps you should take to create a correct commit
message.  I don't know about Ted and others, but for me that would be
a tremendous help with the process which I now consider arcane and
time-consuming.

Best,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl