[qbzr] qcommit: support for templates/drafts of commit message?

[Gary van der Merwe]

On 29/04/2010 15:00, Andrew Bennetts wrote:
> Alexander Belchenko wrote:
> [...]
>>> It seems bzr has some sort of the hooks to get the message template.
>>> http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/bzr.2.1/en/user-reference/hooks-help.html#commit-message-template
>>>
>>>
>>> Maybe we need to use that hook in qcommit?
>>
>> Quick chat with Jelmer and Andrew in #bzr reveals that this hook is
>> CLI-only thing and should be used only when actual commit is
>> started. Therefore we can't use it.
>>
>> Should we invent our own hook? Why not?
> 
> (I think the claim that it is CLI-only is too strong, as I tried to
> explain on IRC.)
> 
> Jelmer's suggestion that you propose an interface for the hook that
> you'd like to use is a good one.  It will help us understand your
> requirements better, specifically exactly what information you feel
> should be available to the hook to help it generate the template.
> 
> -Andrew.


I've allready been down this road. Please see
lp:~garyvdm/qbzr/read_commit_message_hook.

It works with the bzr-builddeb message template, but not with the news
template.

The commit-message-template gets passed a commit object. This is not
available to qcommit when the template message is need. I've
reimplemented some of this object in qbzr.lib.commit.MockCommitObj to
get the builddeb template to work, but the news template uses stuff that
I have not implemented.

Ideally, commit-message-template should not be passed a commit object,
rather arguments that qcommit can easily provide, e.g:
* list of files to be commit/excluded
* old tree,
* new tree,
* method to get delta

These are provided in the commit object, but in a fashion that is
difficult to reproduce.

Previous discussion:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar/2009q3/062169.html

Gary