[LLVMdev] [cfe-dev] Commit message policy?

[Davide Italiano]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 1:12 PM, Renato Golin <renato.golin at linaro.org> wrote:
> On 6 March 2015 at 20:59, Reid Kleckner <rnk at google.com> wrote:
>> I think the only guideline we should have is that the first line should be
>> written as though it is an email subject, because it gets used for that. If
>> you write a long first line, then you get a long subject, and it looks
>> silly. If people want to embarrass themselves with strangely formatted
>> email, they it's on them. We don't need a specific hard or soft number.
>
> Not many people care about the email subject already, that's why they
> keep using ridiculously long first lines.
>
> IMO, "suggesting" to write short first lines is the same as not doing
> anything. Either we add a cap (say, 80 chars), or we don't do
> anything.
>
> Chandler's other suggestion, tough, is interesting: to write up a bit
> about what a *good* message would be, so the people that were really
> interested, could do it "right" (tm).
>

Another guideline I would like to propose for commit messages is that
of attaching to the commit a link to the code review, if any.  For big
changes, this allows easily to reconstruct the history of the commit,
together with other informations (e.g. the reviewers). A potential
downside of it is that links might be not valid anymore after a while,
but I still think the advantages overcome the problems.

FWIW, I already try to include this info when I commit, so if it's not
OK or people have concerns about it, I would like to have this
explictly stated.

--
Davide

"There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more
or less solved" -- Henri Poincare