Re: log format for vc-bzr

[Jason Earl]

Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> writes:

> Andreas Schwab <address@hidden> writes:
>
>   > Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden> writes:
>   > 
>   > > Useless for whom? For the developer who is working on the
>   > > feature? No, they are small milestones and state-savers (for
>   > > synchronizing his desktop with his laptop, for instance). For
>   > > the other developers? Yes, but that's the reason why merged
>   > > history is hidden by default.
>   > 
>   > Such a useless commit history should never be published in the
>   > first place.
>
> And to build on your argument: if the developer decides to put
> something in a log, then it must be relevant, so we should show it by
> default.

Really?  Perhaps I am just showing my ignorance, but I make trivial
commits all of the time with bzr.  As Óscar pointed out I will often
commit with a message like "Switching to main desktop" or "Time to go
home."  This might seem like junk (and it mostly is junk), but I have
surprised myself quite a few times by actually using these cues to
remember why it was that I left off where I did.

That doesn't mean that I want all of these commit messages to show up in
the log when I do bzr log on the mainline.  As a bzr user I personally
think that bzr has the right default in this case.  While working on a
feature or fixing a bug I can use the commit message to remind me what I
am doing.  When I finally merge, however, I need to create a commit
message that is more substantial.

I suppose that git users use rebase to erase all of the "junk" commit
messages.  From what I understand I can do the same with bzr.  However,
if I want to work on the same patch on more than one machine doing
things this way seems to raise the level of difficulty high enough that
I can't figure out how to do it :).

Now, obviously, you can write vc-mode so that it shows commit messages
that bzr log hides by default, but this will be quite surprising to
people that use bzr.

Jason