[Monotone-devel] [RFC] Monotone Commit Template

[Pablo Delgado]

Pablo Delgado wrote:

Hi Everyone,

[name] recommended that I started working on something that I feel bothers me or I need. Well, one of this things is
 the commit templating capability that cvs has. This feature allows the repository manager to establish the basic structure of the commit message. This helps obvioudly review the log information so that it is not just a long list of changes.

Example:

PR:
Submitted By:
Reviewed By:
Approved By:
Description:

MTN: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
MTN: Please fill out this commit message.
MTN: 
MTN: PR:
MTN: Enter a description of this change.
MTN: Lines beginning with `MTN:' are removed automatically.
MTN:
MTN: Current branch: head
MTN: Changes against parent 7d72b4f63082eab237b029d0ff1980f0be374f7a
MTN:   patched  main.cpp
MTN: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
MTN:

OK,  after completing this quicky task, I submitted the patches and waited to comments, recommendation, etc.  While I waited I visited
the WIKI site to find quick tasks for me to do while I wait. And I found that the Template request what actually there. So just ignore the
patches I submitted (Which were all doing , lol).


Here is the quicky description.

support for .mtn-template. This is a versioned file, that is used as the default for log messages. This might be helpful so you can put in fields for bug numbers, standardize your log message format, etc. Implementation is to make it the default value of _MTN/log. One tricky bit is that commits should be canceled if given an empty or _unchanged_ log message; currently they are canceled only on an empty log message.

If you read the implementation part of the description it states it should be the default value of _MTN/log. Does that mean:
That the content in _MTN/log should contain a copy of the template so when the user edits the log they follow the template?


Also, I am assuming that the contents of _MTN are not meant to be edited by hand .. is this a correct assumption?? And if so would it be best to add a new command
maybe "mtn worklog" that the user would use to record their work. The way it could work is upon executing "mtn worklog" mtn generates the template from .mtn-template and launches $EDITOR if _MTN/log is empty. If _MTN/log is not empty then it reads the contents of _MTN/log and launches the $EDITOR. Once complete the user saves it and mtn saves it back to _MTN/log.

Now the code in "get_log_message_interactively" does not have to change when the user executes mtn commit.

How does that sound?