Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages

["Daniel Berlin" <dberlin@dberlin.org>]

On 12/2/07, Richard Kenner <kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> wrote:
> > > How could a newcomer guess why the gcc_force_collect flag needs to be
> > > reset?
> >
> > That is supposed to be written in a comment.  The change log entry
> > should describe _what_ is being changed, so that you can find out when a
> > particular change was made.
>
> Not quite.  The comments are supposed to say why the code is doing what
> it's doing (and, where it's helpful, why it ISN'T doing something else).
> Purely historical references in the comments that don't serve to clarify
> the present code are discouraged.  (We don't want comments turning in a
> blog, for example.)
>
> I view the description in the gcc-patches message as PART of the CM history
> of GCC in that IT'S the place to go to get this information.  What's
> unfortunate, I think, is that there's no easy way to find this message from
> the CM revision number.
>

Nothing stops people from putting URL's. However, I'd much rather see
us put more detailed explanations in svn log or the ChangeLog than try
to associate mailing list threads with commits.

I'm certainly not going to hunt down the URL for every thread for
every patch I commit.