Re: Why are so many great packages not trying to get included in GNU Emacs? WAS: Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Konstantin Kharlamov]

On Sat, 2020-06-13 at 17:35 +0300, Dmitry Gutov wrote:
> On 13.06.2020 14:59, Konstantin Kharlamov wrote:
> > no other projects require
> > writing down a list of functions I changed just for the fun of it
> 
> As a reviewer, there's something to be said about having an overview of 
> the whole diff (which can get long) in a few paragraphs on top of the 
> patch. A good commit message like that actually makes a lot of things 
> clear in advance.

FTR, I am all for having good commit messages. It is IMO a must have for any git
project. But having a list of function names with description for each does not
make one. Instead it should be an overview of what is done, why, and how.

Suppose you have a patch that deduplicates the same code pattern across 34
functions by factoring it out to a single short function. Do you really need
that list? I mean, sure it's a fun fact to know, but you'll have to review diff
anyway. If anything, it only burdens you by forcing to check that each function
is on the list. Commit message should reveal the intention of the changes (and
perhaps, if OP thinks changes may raise questions, they should also write the
reasoning). And then a reviewer gotta check (in particular) this intention
matches the actual code.

On that matter I often love to quote a post from 2009 by Peter Hutterer, a
libinput and Linux HID subsystem maintainer. A post that is old but is not
outdated http://who-t.blogspot.com/2009/12/on-commit-messages.html

> But yes, that also compensates for otherwise more difficult review 
> process, compared to some automated tools other projects use.
> 
> > Okay, you want this — but could you at least automate it!
> > And no, some Emacs function does not cut it, people not necessarily use
> > git from Emacs. I
> > personally don't. Please, use git hoooks, because this is what everyone
> > is*forced*  to use, you can't possibly miss a git hook.
> 
> Someday(tm) we'll migrate to Gitlab, or Gogs, or whatever, and we'll 
> have that.
> 
> Regarding hooks, we do use them to an extent, but nobody has written a 
> checker for commit messages for them yet. And that still wouldn't cover 
> people who make patches against released/packaged versions of Emacs, as 
> opposed to the Git tree.
> 
> The rest of your email, I pretty much agree with. Except, you know, it's 
> still quite possible to contribute (pointing to self).