On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 11:49:11AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote: > >> > I am OK with adding the test for import as a separate patch. What I am >> > not OK with (and this goes for the rest of the commit message, too) is >> > failing to explain any back-story at all for why the change is done in >> > the way it is. >> > >> > _You_ may understand it _right now_, but that is not the primary >> > audience of the message. The primary audience is somebody else a year >> > from now who is wondering why this patch was done the way it was. >> >> Who would be this person? Somebody who wonders why this test is using >> "feature done"? I doubt such a person would exist, as using this >> feature is standard, as can be seen below this chunk. *If* the test >> was *not* using this "feature done", *then* sure, an explanation would >> be needed. > > If it was so obvious, why did your initial patch not use "feature done"? Because I didn't want to test the obvious, I wanted to test something else. > If it was so obvious, why did our email discussion go back and forth so > many times before arriving at this patch? This patch has absolutely nothing to do with that, in fact, forget about it, such a minor check is not worth this time and effort: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/220899 > It was certainly not obvious to me when this email thread started. So in > response to your question: *I* am that person. I was him two weeks ago, > and there is a good chance that I will be him a year from now. No, you are not. I didn't send a patch with "feature done" originally, the only reason you wondered about the patch with "feature done" is that you saw one without it. It will _never_ happen again. > Much of > my work on git is spent tracking down bugs in older code, and those > commit messages are extremely valuable to me in understanding what > happened at the time. Lets make a bet. Let's push the simpler version, and when you hit this commit message retrospectively and find that you don't understand what is happening, I loose, and I will forever accept verbose commit messages. It will never happen. > But I give up on you. I find most of your commit messages lacking in > details and motivation, making assumptions that the reader is as > familiar with the code when reading the commit as you are when you wrote > it. I tried to help by suggesting in review that you elaborate. That > didn't work. So I tried to help by writing the text myself. But clearly > I am not going to convince you that it is valuable, even if it requires > no work at all from you, so I have nothing else to say on the matter. Me neither. I picked your solution, but that's not enough, you *always* want me to do EXACTLY what you want, and never argue back. It's not going to happen. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html