[webkit-dev] Update on commit messages (was: Re: Proposal: Commit messages should start with a one-line summary of the change)

[Adam Roben]

On Jul 1, 2011, at 10:38 AM, Adam Roben wrote:

> On Jun 30, 2011, at 7:52 PM, Darin Adler wrote:
> 
>> I do think that given the tools behavior you described, we should move the reviewer text after the bug title and patch description paragraph, even though you explicitly said that’s not what you are proposing.
> 
> I think that would be a good first step. It would definitely be better than what we have now from a tools perspective. And in a lot of cases these days, the bug title really is a short description of the change. [1]
> 
> I think these two bugs will get us started:
> <http://webkit.org/b/26755> webkit-patch's commit messages are less readable than commit-log-editor's
> <http://webkit.org/b/63804> commit-log-editor reorders ChangeLog entries in unexpected ways

These two bugs have now been fixed. (There was a little fallout from bug 26755, but hopefully that has been taken care of, too.)

prepare-ChangeLog now puts the bug title and URL first, then the "Reviewed by" line. commit-log-editor no longer reorders the ChangeLog contents (other than extracting common lines to the top of the commit message). webkit-patch now uses commit-log-editor to create its commit messages.

I think this has made some of our tools a lot more useful. (See, e.g., <http://trac.webkit.org/log/trunk?rev=90579&stop_rev=90540>. The switch from the old commit messages to the new ones is quite obvious.) I think it's also a slight improvement in readability of ChangeLogs, as in many cases the bug title is a description of the change.

I'm going to drop the "put a one-line summary at the top of your commit message" suggestion for now. I think I've caused enough change for one email thread. :-)

-Adam