Re: Header lines of commit messages

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:36:13 -0500
> Cc: address@hidden
> 
> On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:16:51 +0300 Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote: 
> 
> EZ> In the Gnus case, I'd prefer more meaningful headers as well, but it's
> EZ> hard to ask for that when a large body of unrelated changes is
> EZ> delivered to Emacs at once.
> 
> Katsumi Yamaoka has been doing the synchronization so far.  Let him and
> the other Gnus developers know if there's a problem with the
> synchronization log messages.

As long as you are committing to the Emacs repository many unrelated
changes, there really is no way of making the commit messages more
useful.  But at least in several cases, it looks like the committed
changes belong to a single changeset.  Examples:

    revno: 100593
    committer: Romain Francoise <address@hidden>
    branch nick: trunk
    timestamp: Sat 2010-06-12 19:26:40 +0200
    message:
      Synch with Gnus trunk.
      * gnus-util.el (gnus-date-get-time): Move up before first use.
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    revno: 100575 [merge]
    committer: Katsumi Yamaoka <address@hidden>
    branch nick: trunk
    timestamp: Thu 2010-06-10 05:54:25 +0000
    message:
      Synch with Gnus trunk.
      (gnus-mime-buttonized-part-id): New internal variable.
      (gnus-article-edit-part): Bind it to make last part that is substituted
       or deleted visible.
      (gnus-mime-display-single): Buttonize part of which id equals to
       gnus-mime-buttonized-part-id.
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    revno: 100564 [merge]
    committer: Katsumi Yamaoka <address@hidden>
    branch nick: trunk
    timestamp: Thu 2010-06-10 00:31:03 +0000
    message:
      Synch with Gnus trunk.
      2010-06-10  Dan Christensen  <address@hidden>
       * gnus-util.el (gnus-user-date): Use gnus-date-get-time.
       (gnus-dd-mmm): Use gnus-date-get-time.
       * gnus-sum.el (gnus-thread-latest-date): Use gnus-date-get-time and
       simplify logic.
       (gnus-summary-limit-to-age): Use gnus-date-get-time.
       (gnus-sort-threads): emit message if gnus-sort-threads-loop used.
    ------------------------------------------------------------

For such changes, it would be more useful if the first line of the
commit message summarized the change, instead of saying just "Synch
with Gnus trunk".  That would allow to, e.g., find the merge which
introduced some specific change in Gnus by just looking at the output
of "bzr log --line", which shows only those first lines from the
commit messages.

> I plan to eventually set up a more automatic synchronization method.

Thanks.  For that, I hope the original commit message would become the
commit message in the Bazaar repository.

> >> If you really *do* want to know about irrelevant commits, I don't
> >> understand why you find it acceptable that Gnus doesn't rebase its
> >> synchs into the mainline.
> 
> EZ> Because I'm too old to fight Quixotic battles.  And because people who
> EZ> do the job should have some leeway in determining how far they want to
> EZ> go towards the project to which they contribute.  If Stefan and Yidong
> EZ> can live with what Gnus maintainers do when they synch, so can I.
> 
> Sorry, I am not clear on the problem, though it's probably obvious to
> you.  Can you explain what's the problem and what we can do on the Gnus
> side to remedy it?

Only what I ask above regarding the first line of the commit messages.