From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8963 invoked by alias); 2 Dec 2007 20:23:49 -0000 Received: (qmail 8954 invoked by uid 22791); 2 Dec 2007 20:23:49 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from rv-out-0910.google.com (HELO rv-out-0910.google.com) (209.85.198.191) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:22:46 +0000 Received: by rv-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id f5so2361922rvb for ; Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:22:39 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.143.161.3 with SMTP id n3mr3072382wfo.1196626959743; Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:22:39 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.142.217.1 with HTTP; Sun, 2 Dec 2007 12:22:38 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4aca3dc20712021222j34c30fd2y1acd6354a507b621@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:23:00 -0000 From: "Daniel Berlin" To: "Richard Kenner" Subject: Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages Cc: schwab@suse.de, gcc@gcc.gnu.org, sam@rfc1149.net In-Reply-To: <10712021228.AA23790@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <2007-12-02-11-05-39+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <10712021228.AA23790@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2007-12/txt/msg00033.txt.bz2 On 12/2/07, Richard Kenner 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 Purely historical references in the comments that don't serve to clarify 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.