Re: git history tracking across renames (and emacs support) (Was: The name gnus-cloud.el)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > If it's important enough to 
  > mention the change from extern to static in the commit message, the 
  > current guidelines would seem to imply that it's important enough to 
  > mention why the change was made in code comments.

Here's what the standard actually says:

      If you think that a change
    calls for explanation, you're probably right.  Please do explain
    it---but please put the full explanation in comments in the code,
    where people will see it whenever they see the code.

So you're criticizing a practice which is NOT our standard.

Note also that it talks about "explanation".  We recommend such
comments, NOT to state the facts of what changed, but to explain the
reasons for the change _when that seems useful to explain_.

Our advice does NOT suggest adding a comment to state the fact that
the variable was changed to static.  However, if the reason for this
change was not evident, it would be good to explain that reason in
comments.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.