Community commit messages

Hey TUs,
Please make descriptive commit messages when committing changes
to SVN. I've seen a lack of messages, or cryptic ones like 'FS#1234'.
Please describe the change, or the issue it's solving in plain language.

Thanks.

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey TUs,
> Please make descriptive commit messages when committing changes
> to SVN. I've seen a lack of messages, or cryptic ones like 'FS#1234'.
> Please describe the change, or the issue it's solving in plain language.
>
> Thanks.
>
>

FS#1234 - ypbind-mt needs to be upgraded on cvs

it was fixed in August of 2004 :-p

Ronald

On 06/11/2009, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey TUs,
> Please make descriptive commit messages when committing changes
> to SVN. I've seen a lack of messages, or cryptic ones like 'FS#1234'.
> Please describe the change, or the issue it's solving in plain language.
When you read 'FS#1234' as commit message I think you understand that
it means "fixed bug report #1234". So, if you want to investigate on
that commit you have a wonderful page on flyspray.

Regards

--
Andrea `bash` Scarpino
Arch Linux Developer

2009/11/7 Andrea Scarpino <andrea@archlinux.org>:
> On 06/11/2009, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hey TUs,
>> Please make descriptive commit messages when committing changes
>> to SVN. I've seen a lack of messages, or cryptic ones like 'FS#1234'.
>> Please describe the change, or the issue it's solving in plain language.
> When you read 'FS#1234' as commit message I think you understand that
> it means "fixed bug report #1234". So, if you want to investigate on
> that commit you have a wonderful page on flyspray.
>

Still, the first line of commit message is there to give a fast
overview what happened, only have to check the wonderful flyspray if
you are interested. For Loui's example: you'd have to check every
single commit manually.
Also, the fix many times not directly what the bug report is about -
but what was uncovered during the bug-report discussion. Thus not only
have to check the bug report header, but the whole thing every
time....

Is it hard to spend an extra 5 second to write a short summary to keep
the good practice and also save other people minutes?

Just an opinion...
Greg

On Fri 06 Nov 2009 18:51 +0100, Ronald van Haren wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey TUs,
> > Please make descriptive commit messages when committing changes
> > to SVN. I've seen a lack of messages, or cryptic ones like 'FS#1234'.
> > Please describe the change, or the issue it's solving in plain language.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> >
>
> FS#1234 - ypbind-mt needs to be upgraded on cvs
>
> it was fixed in August of 2004 :-p

That's just an example of the types of messages that are committed.
I didn't bother recording the actual numbers, so I just wrote 1234.
Maybe 9999 would have been more obvious. Anyways I hope you are not
confused and you understand my point.

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri 06 Nov 2009 18:51 +0100, Ronald van Haren wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hey TUs,
>> > Please make descriptive commit messages when committing changes
>> > to SVN. I've seen a lack of messages, or cryptic ones like 'FS#1234'.
>> > Please describe the change, or the issue it's solving in plain language.
>> >
>> > Thanks.
>> >
>> >
>>
>> FS#1234 - ypbind-mt needs to be upgraded on cvs
>>
>> it was fixed in August of 2004 :-p
>
> That's just an example of the types of messages that are committed.
> I didn't bother recording the actual numbers, so I just wrote 1234.
> Maybe 9999 would have been more obvious. Anyways I hope you are not
> confused and you understand my point.
>

gheh lol, I understood your point (note the ':-p' after my message).

Either way, most of the time I agree it's a good idea to put a simple
message after the bug idea, as long we don't write whole stories
(there is the bug report for that). It makes it eassier to spot things
of interest, I don't know bug numbers by heart.

Ronald

On Fri 06 Nov 2009 19:07 +0100, Andrea Scarpino wrote:
> On 06/11/2009, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey TUs,
> > Please make descriptive commit messages when committing changes
> > to SVN. I've seen a lack of messages, or cryptic ones like 'FS#1234'.
> > Please describe the change, or the issue it's solving in plain language.

> When you read 'FS#1234' as commit message I think you understand that
> it means "fixed bug report #1234". So, if you want to investigate on
> that commit you have a wonderful page on flyspray.

That's almost like saying we should just do away with commit messages
completely and just look at the diff to figure out what was done.
The revision number obviously refers to the diff, which contains the
literal change. Unfortunately that doesn't necessarily make things very
clear.

Commit messages should explain the commit, clarify reasons for it and
not fully rely on outside reference.

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 13:36, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
> Commit messages should explain the commit, clarify reasons for it and
> not fully rely on outside reference.
>
>
At least for most of my updates, it's nothing more than pkgver/md5
changes. Do I really need to elaborate beyond the summary line?

2009/11/7 Daenyth Blank <daenyth+arch@gmail.com <daenyth%2Barch@gmail.com>>

> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 13:36, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Commit messages should explain the commit, clarify reasons for it and
> > not fully rely on outside reference.
> >
> >
> At least for most of my updates, it's nothing more than pkgver/md5
> changes. Do I really need to elaborate beyond the summary line?
>

-m "Updated foo to 1.24 from 1.23" should suffice in that case and qualify
as "explanation-cum-clarification"

On 11/06/2009 09:09 PM, Ray Rashif wrote:

2009/11/7 Daenyth Blank<daenyth+arch@gmail.com<daenyth%2Barch@gmail. com>>


On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 13:36, Loui Chang<louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:

Commit messages should explain the commit, clarify reasons for it and
not fully rely on outside reference.



At least for most of my updates, it's nothing more than pkgver/md5
changes. Do I really need to elaborate beyond the summary line?



-m "Updated foo to 1.24 from 1.23" should suffice in that case and qualify
as "explanation-cum-clarification"


the default message is "updpkg: $pkname $pkgver"
i really like that in this thread only TUs to participate.

i'm totally agree with you Loui. I'll try my best in the future to add
descriptive messages.


--
Ionut