Re: Updated HACKING

[Andy Wingo]

On Wed 03 Sep 2008 19:35, Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden> writes:

> How about the following:
>
>
> - Provide a description in the commit message, like so:
>
>   1-line description of change
>
>   More extensive discussion of your change.  Document why you are
>   changing things.
>
>   * filename (function name): file specific change comments.

This looks really good to me. If we move from ChangeLogs, then it makes
sense to adjust the format as necessary, preserving the same semantics.
We should probably propose this as the standard GNU format, actually. (I
believe bzr people use something like this as well.)

> I would like to propose to only have the 
>
>  * filename
>
> sections if there are file specific notes that are not covered by
> the general description and git's list of modified files.

I agree in the case that e.g. you're just updating copyrights; but
generally I prefer to have the files in. It's nice to be able to read
everything in one place, instead of bouncing my eye around in gitk, and
it doesn't impact readability adversely since it's after any general
comment.

Also, listing files helps the committer make sure that you're committing
only those files that you intend to -- often, when I make the commit
message, I find that there's some unwanted change, which reminds me to
exclude it from the commit.

Andy
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