Re: [Monotone-devel] monotone Hacking

[Stephen Leake]

Richard Levitte <address@hidden> writes:

> In message <address@hidden> on Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:22:43 +0200, "Julio M. 
> Merino Vidal" <address@hidden> said:
>
> jmmv84> Using plain text messages will make one think twice before
> jmmv84> doing that, because he'll have to explain *why* he is
> jmmv84> committing that at once.
>
> I totally agree with that.  There are numerous messages saying that
> the programmer fiddle with this and that function, created a new one,
> removed an old one, but NOT ONE WORD about the overall change, its
> intention or its reasons.  Basically, that makes for crap
> documentation.

On the other hand, that is the way we typically work. I often notice
"little things" while I'm working on one "big thing". Would it be
better to _not_ fix them? Or do one commit for each little thing?

Documentation belongs in .texi files, not in commit messages. Commit
messages should help you find when a change occured, and give
pointers/hints about why, but the real reasons should be in more
stable form.

Otherwise, you can get oscillations; "changed to a linked list because
it's faster on Windows", "changed to a red-black tree because it's
faster on Gentoo" etc. If those comments were in a design file, it
would be obvious what's happening. If they are just in the commit
messages, it's much harder to notice.

-- 
-- Stephe