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Re: Please can we write informative commit messages?
From: |
Fred Kiefer |
Subject: |
Re: Please can we write informative commit messages? |
Date: |
Fri, 6 Apr 2018 14:03:58 +0200 |
I fully agree with you that we need more meaningful commit and ChangeLog
messages. But if it is "trivial to automatically generate a ChangeLog from a
commit log“ why did you fail to do so for your last commit? Could you please
add this?
Fred
> Am 06.04.2018 um 11:52 schrieb David Chisnall <address@hidden>:
>
> Hello,
>
> I realise that the GNUstep conventions recommend writing a ChangeLog entry
> rather than a sensible commit log, but this makes it quite painful to
> navigate the project history. Tools like git blame and git log make it easy
> to see the history of a particular file or directory. The GitHub web
> interface also provides convenient displays of these. For example, if I want
> to see what the recent changes in NSLock.m were about, I can look at:
>
> https://github.com/gnustep/libs-base/commits/master/Source/NSLock.m
>
> If I found a bug, I can use this page to see who last touched the line of
> code and why:
>
> https://github.com/gnustep/libs-base/blame/master/Source/NSLock.m
>
> Having to find the ChangeLog entry that corresponds to a change is an
> unnecessary indirection. Trying to go the other way is impossible - the
> changelog entries include only a date not a revision so if I want to see the
> diff associated with a ChangeLog entry the only way I can do so is by running
> git blame on the ChangeLog and finding the corresponding entry.
>
> It is trivial to automatically generate a ChangeLog from a commit log, but
> decidedly nontrivial to do the reverse.
>
> Looking at our recent commit messages, they’re almost all non-informative.
> This creates a barrier for entry for new developers, because no one under the
> age of 40 would think to go and look in the ChangeLog to try to understand
> the motivation behind a change.
>
> Please can we join the mid 1990s?
>
> David