On Mon, 13 Mar 2023 15:18:55 +0000,
Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Mar 12, 2023, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> > On Tue, 07 Mar 2023 03:45:50 +0000,
> > Ricardo Koller <ricarkol@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > No functional change intended.
> >
> > I wish people stopped adding this pointless sentence to commit
> > messages. All changes have a functional change one way or another,
> > unless you are only changing a comment.
>
> The implied context is that there is no change in runtime functionality, which
> does hold true for many changes. I personally find the annotation helpful, both
> for code review and when doing git archaeology. If a changelog states that the
> author doesn't/didn't intend a functional change, then _any_ change in (runtime)
> functionality becomes a red flag, and for me, prompts a closer look regardless of
> whether or not I have other concerns with the patch/commit.
And I think it lures the reviewer into a false sense of security. No
intended change, must be fine. Except when it is not. More often than
not, we end-up with seemingly innocent changes that break things.
It is even worse when things get (for good or bad reasons) backported
to -stable or an internal tree of some description. "No functional
change" can become something very different in another context. How do
you communicate this?
Maybe I'll add a standard disclaimer to my own patches ("Here be
dragons!").
M.
--
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
