[PATCH]: Optional explanation for options

[Robey Pointer]

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On 22 Sep 2005, at 19:09, John Arbash Meinel wrote:

> Robey Pointer wrote:
>
>>
>> One thing I see just from playing around is that it takes the latest
>> revision's commit message and elevates it to the top as a summary of
>> the whole changeset.  It would be nice to be able to override  
>> that  with
>> -m (or -F) to provide a true summary, and include the latest   
>> revision
>> info at the bottom with the rest.  Would that make sense?
>>
>
> Well, yes and no. It would certainly be possible to allow -m and  
> let you
> specify a message. But after merging the changeset, this message would
> never be recorded. (unless the person doing the merge copies it when
> they commit).
>
> The reason is that at the time *you* commit, a revision is created and
> contains a message associated with it. The state corresponding to this
> commit never changes. (we keep track of its hash to ensure its
> validity). You could always add a new commit, with a new message  
> instead.
>
> If it's something you really want, it is easy to add. I'm just  
> trying to
> let you know what that will and won't change.

What I imagine is something like this:

$ bzr branch bzr.dev bzr.dev.me
$ cd bzr.dev me
[edit files in bzr.dev.me]
$ bzr commit -m "add FTL-drive support, with careful spacetime tuning"
[oops, bug!  more editing]
$ bzr commit -m "oops, must turn off einstein laws for FTL"
[oops, another bug!]
$ bzr commit -m "ack don't stray so close to black holes"

Each message makes sense to me, but if I submitted the roll-up  
changeset and it was summarized as "ack don't stray so close to black  
holes" (which the current cset seems to do by floating that message  
to the top) it could lead to much confusion. :)

For such a roll-up patch, I'm okay with the cset containing the list  
of revisions and their individual messages (it's kind of a nice view  
of the history of the work done for that patch), but it should be  
possible for the recipient to commit it as a single revision,  
containing a summary message that may be different from any  
individual commit's message.  (In this case, maybe "first draft of  
FTL support from robey".)

robey

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