[cfe-dev] Commit message policy?

[David Blaikie]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 3:51 PM, Renato Golin <renato.golin at linaro.org>
wrote:

> Folks,
>
> After looking at git / svn logs for a long time today, I realised that
> the commit messages could be a bit more helpful for that purpose
> (logs). The kernel has a good policy on commit messages, and I think
> we could use some of that, at least as a strong guideline, not as a
> hard rule.
>
> The idea, AFAIK, is to have a title with 50 chars, separated by an
> empty line and an infinite number of 80-col lines following.


I've never enforced a particular character limit on the first line, but I
try to make sure it's one line, then a blank line, then the rest - this
ensures that one line is the subject of the email sent to the mailing list.

A lot of people end up wrapping their summary line to 2 or 3 lines, which
results in an email subject (& as you mention, git/svn log summaries, etc)
that contain only a sentence fragment that might not be meaningful.

I think git log summaries don't mind really long initial lines - the tools
will wrap it, so far as I know.


> That
> allows us to be very descriptive on the context, but succinct enough
> on the title, so that logs can fit on a reasonably sized terminal +
> git ids, etc.
>
> Is that something we want to follow? I could only find the attribution
> rule on the developer's policy (which we should definitely keep), but
> would be good to have at least some policy on the commit message
> itself.
>
> Also, policies for messages when reverting patches, arc commits,
> approval lists would be good to have documented, rather than keep
> replying to people on the list.
>
> cheers,
> --renato
>
> PS: I don't want us to revert patches with non-standard messages, only
> encourage people to do it right.
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