Changing a commit message

[Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado]

Saluton Ben :)

On Wed, 14 May 2008 00:14:35 +1000, Ben Finney dixit:
> Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado <raul at dervishd.net> writes:
> > On Tue, 13 May 2008 21:43:13 +1000, Ben Finney dixit:
> > > [wanting to change commit messages] is at odds with wanting to
> > > change history in the first place. Surely if wanting the commit
> > > history to be unchanged, one would also want the commit messages
> > > to be unchanged.
> > 
> > Probably, but I want the commit history unchanged and the commit
> > messages without typos ;)
> 
> The commit message is part of the revision data.

I know, I shouldn't be changing revision data, and this looks reasonable
to me: if you want good commit messages, write them right!

Wanting to change the commit messages is weird, and until Subversion I
never thought about doing that. The fact that you can change them in
Subversion with svn-admin doesn't mean that this is a desirable
behaviour in a VS, and clearly it is NOT desirable in distributed VS's.

> > As I told, I come from a centralized VS and I have to change my way
> > of work and think. In the future, I'll try to be much more careful
> > with commit messages.
> 
> A better way to change your way of thinking would be to accept that
> the commit messages are part of history, that a VCS is designed to
> record history, and abandon the idea of trying to change history.

Good point ;))) Anyway, if I want to change part of the history (e.g.
fixing a bug in my program) I just make modifications and commit a new
revision. If I want to change another part of the history (the message
of some commit) I cannot, because they are very different parts of
history. Given this, it's difficult for me to think about commit
messages as part of history. For me, they are only little notes attached
to revisions. I have to start thinking about them as immutable ;)

Again, thanks for your answer. I now see things differently.

Raúl "DervishD" Núñez de Arenas Coronado
-- 
Linux Registered User 88736 | http://www.dervishd.net
It's my PC and I'll cry if I want to... RAmen!
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