From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 31610 invoked by alias); 4 Dec 2007 04:03:53 -0000 Received: (qmail 31328 invoked by uid 22791); 4 Dec 2007 04:02:36 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au (HELO mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au) (128.250.1.22) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Tue, 04 Dec 2007 04:02:32 +0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au with ESMTP id lB442Ojh012067; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 15:02:24 +1100 (EST) Received: from mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 10695-11; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 15:02:23 +1100 (EST) Received: from mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au with ESMTP id lB442Ida012005; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 15:02:23 +1100 (EST) Received: from localhost (njn@localhost) by mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8/Submit) with ESMTP id lB441uZV011604; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 15:02:07 +1100 (EST) Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 04:03:00 -0000 From: Nicholas Nethercote To: Andi Kleen cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <2007-12-02-11-05-39+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net.suse.lists.egcs> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed 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/msg00100.txt.bz2 On Mon, 3 Dec 2007, Andi Kleen wrote: >> Commit logs are basically invisible; > > That's just a (fixable) problem in your coding setup. In other > projects it is very common to use tools like cvs annotate / cvsps / > git blame / git log / etc. to find the reasons for why code is the way > it is. In fact in several editors these can be functions on hot > keys. Programming is hard enough as is without ignoring such valuable > information sources. Don't do it. I didn't say you cannot or should not use these tools. But a good comment on a piece of code sure beats a good commit message, which must be looked at separately, and can be fragmented over multiple commits, etc. Nick