Re: [PATCHES] Two small improvements to HACKING

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Stefano Lattarini wrote on Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 12:09:15AM CEST:
>   HACKING: improve description of git "bugfix branches".
>   HACKING: acknowledge Perl 4 as utterly obsolete.

Nits below.

> Subject: [PATCH 1/2] HACKING: improve description of git "bugfix branches".
> 
> * HACKING (Working with git): Extend and make less terse the
> description of git "bugfix branches".

grammar: ... and make the description of ... less terse.
or just: Extend.

> --- a/HACKING
> +++ b/HACKING
> @@ -139,9 +139,11 @@
>    # if all seems ok, then actually push:
>    git push origin maint branch-1.11 master
>  
> -* For bug fixes of long-standing bugs, it may be useful to commit them to
> -  a new branch based off of the commit that introduced the bug, and merge
> -  this bugfix branch into active branches that descend from the buggy commit.
> +* When fixing a bug (especially a long-standing one), it may be useful
> +  to commit the fix to a new temporary branch based off the commit that
> +  introduced the bug.  Then this "bugfix branch" can be merged into all
> +  the active branches descending from the buggy commit.  This offers a
> +  simple way to fix the bug consistently and effectively.

Are you aware that merging fix-foo in maint, branch-1.11, and master
is equivalent to merging fix-foo in maint, then merging maint in
branch-1.11 and master (under the assumption that prior to the fix,
maint was an ancestor of branch-1.11 and master)?  If no, this paragraph
should be rewritten, if yes, then how come you didn't just merge maint
into branch-1.11 and master?  ;-)

> Subject: [PATCH 2/2] HACKING: acknowledge Perl 4 as utterly obsolete.
> 
> * HACKING (Editing automake.in and aclocal.in): Don't tell that Perl 5
> is OK now: that's obvious!   In fact, I'd be surprised to see anyone
> still using Perl 4...

Let's keep our log entries concise, and no need to get excited in them.
configure already requires 5.6, so this would have been sufficient, no?

HACKING: Perl 4 is obsolete.
* HACKING (Editing automake.in and aclocal.in): Remove note about Perl 5.

Thanks,
Ralf