On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 2:01 PM, John Keeping <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 12:53:38PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote: >> On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 12:37 PM, John Keeping <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> > On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 07:33:42PM +0200, SZEDER Gábor wrote: >> >> On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 12:23:01PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote: >> >> > On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 12:18 PM, SZEDER Gábor <szeder@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> > > On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 11:40:22AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote: >> >> > >> We should free objects before leaving. >> >> > >> >> >> > >> Signed-off-by: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@xxxxxxxxx> >> >> > > >> >> > > A shortlog-friendlier subject could be: "sequencer: free objects >> >> > > before leaving". >> >> > >> >> > I already defended my rationale for this succinct commit message: >> >> > >> >> > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/225609/focus=225610 >> >> >> >> Your arguments were unconvincing. The mere fact that I raised this >> >> issue unbeknownst to the earlier posting clearly shows that there's >> >> demand for descriptive subjects. >> > >> > Not to mention that with your subject no body is needed, making the >> > overall message more succinct. >> >> It's not succinct at all, because there's no short and quick >> description of what the patch actually is; a trivial fix. > > Is it not equally succinct to say "fix memory leak"? Almost. "fix memory leak" doesn't say anything about the scope; it can be a huge change, or a trivial one. Perhaps "trivial memory leak fix" would be better. >> > When reading a log, as soon as I see "trivial" I become suspicious that >> > someone is trying to cover something up, much like "left as an exercise >> > for the reader". If the subject says "fix memory leak" then it's >> > obvious what the patch is meant to do, and when there is no subtlety to >> > be explained (as there isn't in this patch) there is no need for a body. >> >> You are not a rational person then. The commit message has absolutely >> no bearing on the quality of the code. If you are less suspicious of a >> commit message that says "fix memory leak", you are being completely >> biased. >> >> Whether the commit message says "fix memory leak", or "trivial fix", >> or "foobar", the code might still be doing something wrong, and you >> can't decide that until you look at the code. > > I have a certain level of trust that commit summaries in git.git will be > accurate. If I want to know what has changed, then "fix memory leak" > implies "no functional change"; if I see "trivial fix" then how do I > know what that is? It is a trivial fix, that's what it is. You don't need to bother yourself with it. Unless you plan to see the code. > It could be a whitespace change, That's not a fix, that's a cleanup. > a fix to a memory leak, a typo correction, a change to a separator in a message shown to > the user, You might be right, but I don't think you _need_ to know which one of them it is; they are all trivial. In 90% of the cases you want to skip them and keep reading. In the 10% where you do need more, well, you probably need to look at the code either way. > or even a small change to corner case behaviour. That's not trivial. >> If you don't care about the code, but still want to know what the >> patch is doing, then you can look at the whole commit message, and "We >> should free objects before leaving." explains that perfectly. > > The short message is what appears in "What's Cooking", why should I need > to break out of my mail client to find out what it means? You don't, it's a trivial fix, and you said you have a certain level of trust on commit summaries ;) -- 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