commit mail subject format

[Aggelos Economopoulos]

Sepherosa Ziehau wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Simon 'corecode' Schubert
> <corecode at fs.ei.tum.de> wrote:
>> Aggelos Economopoulos wrote:
>>> Simon 'corecode' Schubert wrote:
>>>> For anybody confused about the mail subject, let me explain the thing:
>>>>
>>>> DragonFly-2.1.1.5.g73473 master test/test README
>>>> ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
>>>> |           |   |  |     ^branch  ^directory  ^file in directory
>>>> |           |   |  abbreviated commit id
>>>> that's us   |   topological distance to the release, here 5 commits
>>>>          last "release"
>>>>
>>>> The string "2.1.1.5.g73473" is actually the output of git-describe and
>>>> probably will be used in more places in the future (kernel version, ISO
>>>> build rev, etc)
>>> Why do we need all this stuff in the message Subject? The "DragonFly-"
>>> part is essentially wasted space (gee, like I need to be reminded which
>>> folder I'm reading), space that could be used for something useful.
>>> Also, if I want any of the rest of the info, all I need is the commit id
>>> and I can use git to get it. Maaaybe having the commit id appended (so
>>> it won't intrude too much) to the Subject would be useful so you can
>>> speedily search for any discussions relevant to a commit, but that's
>>> also debatable.
>>>
>>> Why can't we use the commit summary or just the branch, directory and
>>> files changed? The whole idea behind the Subject: line is that you can
>>> tell at a glance if you're interested in reading the mail body and I
>>> don't see how this format accomplishes it... All the extra info could go
>>> in the message body if people still want it to be instantly available.
>>> Personally, I only care about the commitid and diffstat, but that's just
>>> me.
>>>
>>> Another idea would be to stuff the extra info in the headers so that
>>> each subscriber can select which fields to view, but I'd prefer a sane
>>> format that more or less works for everybody.
>>>
>>> Opinions?
>> Exactly my thoughts.  Matt insisted on the DragonFly and the commit
>> id-at-the-beginning for search/subject alignment reasons.
> 
> Maybe we should put "DragonFly" in first several lines of the mail
> body, just like the cvs commit mail?

For what purpose?

Aggelos