commit mail subject format

Sascha Wildner saw at online.de
Sun Dec 7 06:15:41 PST 2008


Peter Avalos schrieb:
I agree with this.  To go even further, why not have the subject
actually say wihat the commit is?  A commit message should be
structured with the first line acting as a subject, so why not put that
in the subject of the email?  That way we can actually see what the
commit does, rather than numbers and letters that aren't really telling
me whether I should read that email or not.
After replacing the paths with summaries, how would someone search for 
commits to certain files using only his mail/news client?

Full text search? Hmm, not possible using NNTP unless you download all 
articles. Use gitweb or search the repo? Well not all of us read the 
mailing lists on the same box (or platform even) where they keep the 
repo. And having to keep an additional window open just to see what was 
changed doesn't seem like an improvement for me, personally.

Summaries are sub-optimal for the Subject since they are human generated 
and humans make spelling errors, might forget the 
commit-structuring-rules and tend to formulate things differently from 
what the guy who is searching might expect. I can understand that it 
sounds like a good thing, but I fear that daily practice will not live 
up to it.

Paths in the subject, on the other hand, are certainly not optimal but 
at least they are much more reliable. Of all the commit mailing lists 
I'm on, there isn't a single one that doesn't at tell me in the subject 
at least which directories were affected by the commit.

Sascha

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http://yoyodyne.ath.cx




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