[openstack-dev] Termination of the title line of commit messages
Angus Salkeld
asalkeld at redhat.com
Tue Jun 25 00:14:27 UTC 2013
On 24/06/13 22:50 +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>Hey,
>>Pulling this out of gerrit for discussion.
>>Background is one of my patches to diskimage-builder was -1ed because I
>terminated the title line of the commit message with a period:
>> https://review.openstack.org/33262
>>This is actually the exact opposite to what I consider normal practice
>for git commit messages as I explained in the review and the tripleo
>wiki page, so I proposed a hacking change here:
>> https://review.openstack.org/33789
Can't we just agree to not -1 on this issue? This seems like a major
waste of people resources.
-Angus
>>The rationale for *not* having a period is:
>> * With the 50 char limit, space is at a premium on the first line
>> * The first line is often used as the Subject: in [PATCH] emails -
> subject lines in emails generally don't end in a period
>> * Examples in:
>> https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GitCommitMessages#Summary_of_GIT_commit_message_structure
>> don't end in period
>> (Note - the "should not end with a period" was only added by me
> recently)
>> * Another common reference on git commit messages
>> http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html doesn't either
>> * In git's own git repo, 1.43% of commit messages in the last year
> ended in a period
>> * I'm not aware of any other OpenStack project which enforces this.
> Looking at the history of various projects for the past year (and
> excluding merge commits which don't end with a period), the use of
> period termination runs at between 10 and 30%.
>>Unlike other nitpicking I tend to do with commit messages, I previously
>never thought this was worth even mentioning to committers but if some
>reviewers were going to start -1ing people for the *correct* style then
>I figured it was best to clear it up.
>>Now, for Robert's comments in the review:
>>> It would have been nice for this to be discussed rather than dropping
>> into the communal standards without warning;
>>I tried my best do explain why period termination is broken in the
>diskimage-builder review and wiki page, so it's not like I was trying to
>avoid a discussion.
>>In any case, if I, jogo and sdague got this wrong somehow, the mistake
>is only a git-revert away from being corrected.
>>> the prior documentation *did not* require a period,
>>Yes, but the examples didn't use a period which obviously means a policy
>to *require* a period is a bit bizarre.
>>I'm pretty confident that danpb didn't mention this when he wrote the
>page because he either felt it was obvious or not worth mentioning. I've
>cc-ed him to be sure.
>>> and the reference that was sourced that
>> doesn't use them is one in the git-via-email world which is not how
>> OpenStack does *any* of it's git communications, so the 'gets used
>> like subject line of emails' point is entirely irrelevant.
>>git was born came from a git-via-email world and its usage conventions
>reflect that. I raised the subject line point to try and explain how git
>conventions may have arisen.
>>> In TripleO we have been using a period because the first line of the
>> commit message acts like the first line of a docstring: it is a pithy
>> description of the object it describes. Docstrings are also space
>> limited, and yet PEP8 happily requires good sentence structure and
>> grammar there.
>>It's not a docstring, though. It's a git commit message.
>>> tl;dr - this is an unpythonic change, and the lack of discussion is
>> quite annoying.
>>Well, the former point is irrelevant and hopefully this email corrects
>the latter point :)
>>Cheers,
>Mark.
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