Git commit messages

From a #dreamwidth_dev conversation:

[02:18] <_Simon_> THat does lead to a question, actually - is there anything in particular 
you'd like to see in a pull request's text? Presumably t he bug number that it refers to, 
but otherwise... summary of what's done? Changelog? Just "Fixed it!"? 
(I realise this will depend a  lot on the nature of the changes)
[02:22] <Afuna> bsically, we want:
[02:22] <Afuna> (Bug 1234) Description of what changed
[02:22] <Bugsy> Bug http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1234 trivial, 
P5, -undecided-, dwbugzilla, RESOLVED FIXED, Overeager offer to delete old S2 layers owned by system
[02:22] <Afuna> optional extended information
[02:22] <Afuna> aww bugsy
[02:22] <Afuna> we'll be coming out with actual guidelines shortly!
[02:22] <Afuna> (at some point *G*)
[02:23] <_Simon_> hee, bugsy :-)
[02:23] <kunzite> i seem to be one of the poor guinea pigs here in Noobletville. :D
[02:23] <_Simon_> fair enough
[02:23] <_Simon_> kunzite: I've been submitting them too, 
I was just wondering whether there was specific stuff I should be saying :-)
[02:23] <Afuna> hmm. http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html is a good start
[02:23] <Afuna> and we're going to be basing what we want on that ,
 plus requiring the bug number at the start
[02:24] <_Simon_> err... those guidelines make sense as pull request messages. 
Not so much as commit messages, I'd have thought?
[02:24] <Afuna> ahhh  well!
[02:24] <Afuna> the commit messages get used for the pull request
[02:24] <Afuna> so in a sense , they're the same *G*
[02:24] <Afuna> the goal basically is
[02:24] <_Simon_> they do?
[02:24] <Afuna> for someone reading the log later on
[02:25] <Afuna> for it to still make sense t othem
[02:25] * Afuna nods
[02:25] <_Simon_> ah, I guess later on the pull request text has effectively vanished
[02:25] <Afuna> eyeah
[02:25] <Afuna> the pull requset text will still be on the website
but it won't be part of the regular changelog
[02:25] <Afuna> so the commit message is actually v. important
[02:25] <Afuna> as it's what you se when going over history
[02:25] <_Simon_> so do you want multiple work-in-progress commits to be rolled up 
into a single coherent one with a nice message before being submitted?
[02:26] <Afuna> hmm. see there are arguments either way
[02:26] <_Simon_> because I've submitted stuff with multiple commits of 
"added debugging stuff"; "removed debugging stuff"; "flailed a bit" and so forth...
[02:26] <kunzite> i heart flailing.
[02:26] <_Simon_> :-)
[02:26] <Afuna> I'm in favor of  just splatting them all in
[02:26] <Afuna> *but* I'm not against cleaning up thinsg using git commit --squash
[02:27] <_Simon_> Fair enough. Depends how embarassing the false-starts are, I guess ;-)
[02:27] <Afuna> (because sometimes it's useful to see: 
"oh did this thing. which casued bug. don't do that. did this again"
[02:27] <Afuna> yup!
[02:27] <Afuna> basically *G*
[02:27] <Afuna> so. right now we have in changelog
[02:27] <Afuna> some  ohhh maybe three changes to the same file
[02:27] <_Simon_> (the last thing I worked on, it ended up such a mess 
that I actually started a new branch to do it again cleanly to submit...)
[02:27] <Afuna> (apache/livejournal.pm)
[02:27] <Afuna> because we one thing that kept running into edge cases
[02:27] <Afuna> heeee
[02:28] <Afuna> in that case, I would suggest git commit --squash
[02:28] <kunzite> ok lovelies. i'm going to sleep.
[02:28] <kunzite> <3
[02:28] <Afuna> that should prove useful for cleaning up the most egregious of...
[02:28] <Afuna> stuff

[02:28] <Afuna> night
[02:28] <Afuna> !
[02:28] <_Simon_> *nod* In that case, the *code* was also in a mess. 
I couldn't remember where I had left warns etc all over the place, 
added stuff then commented it out, etc. But, yes :-)
[02:29] * Afuna nod nods
[02:29] <Afuna> it used to be that putting it all into zilla sort of fixed that 
because we'd just get the finished product
[02:29] <_Simon_> *nod*
[02:29] <Afuna> but also sometimes looking back at code ,there's the sense of:
[02:29] <Afuna> "oh, why did they do $this and not $that?"
[02:29] <Afuna> and you look back into history
[02:29] <Afuna> and it was shoved in as part of some giant commit with no context
[02:30] <_Simon_> and hopefully somebody explained it in the commit, 
or you see a sequence where they tried the other and it didn't work. I see
[02:30] <Afuna> or with all context having gone on probably in some comment thread somewhere else or
[02:30] <Afuna> yeah *nods*
[02:30] <Afuna> in an
[02:30] <Afuna> whatsis
[02:30] <Afuna> intermediat ecommit
[02:30] <Afuna> OTOH I do see the, how it'd be helpful to just be able t oclean out warns ;-)
[02:31] <Afuna> (what I sometimse do: I use "git stash" to save away debug lines for later
[02:31] <Afuna> but without putting it into the main ... commit thing
[02:31] <_Simon_> *nod*
[02:31] <Afuna> or else I'll save the warns in a commit where there are no other functional changes
[02:31] <_Simon_> that makes sense
[02:31] <Afuna> so that it's easy to find them again
[02:31] <Afuna> of course that's easy to say after the fact *G*