[gnuastro-devel] [task #14289] Adding bug/task fixed/completed when merging with master

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

Follow-up Comment #2, task #14289 (project gnuastro):

Thanks, I completely agree with your argument. I just wanted to add that I am
not proposing to force bug/task reports to have a solution. When we have just
seen the bug and don't know the solution or don't have time to dig into it, we
will indeed report any symptom we see and won't provide a solution.

What happens in practice for people who are familiar with the code is that
they cannot be sure it is a bug unless they look into the code first and
confirm it (it might be due to their inputs). During this code check, it
sometimes happens that they find the solution during this confirmation. So
they have to go through this double reporting phase (one report to define the
bug before their commit, and another for the link after they push), which is
inconvenient for the reporter and also, everyone on the mailing list (who
recieves two mails). 

Infact I came up with this suggestion after your commits that didn't include
these statements. I noticed that I had also forgot to add these statements for
you as an ammendment before pushing. It then occurred to me that a `git commit
--amend' by the person who does the final merge to master is much more easier
to manage (one less thing for the maintainer to worry about!). It also had the
practical benefit to the submitter, that if they have a solution, they can
also share their branch link with the same initial report. 

Having the person in charge or merging with master add the `This finishes task
#XXXX.' or `This fixes bug #XXX' can also act as a kind of stamp for double
check on the final commit that gets merged. Infact I hope that in the future,
even when the main maintainer has a branch to merge with master, they don't do
it themselves, and other developers would have to check the work, sign it off
with this statement, and then merge with master.

The cases of your last two commits are interesting examples: please compare
the `author' and `committer' in the typo commit
<http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuastro.git/commit/?id=4a0f67422f4> and the
genauthors commit
<http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuastro.git/commit/?id=61b120a6b9d>. It
would be great if all commits that get merged into master have different names
in these fields (even those by the main maintainer).

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