Commit messages on trunk

[Robert Collins]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 6:38 AM, Gustavo Niemeyer
<gustavo.niemeyer at canonical.com> wrote:
> Greetings developers (and potential candidates),
>
> After a quick inspection in our current history for the trunk branch:
>
>    http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ensemble/ensemble/trunk/changes
>
> It seems that one healthy practice regarding commit messages that we
> used to have has been a bit lost in time, and it would be nice to have
> it back.
>
> Specifically, commit messages to trunk should follow a specific format
> which inform: the branch merged, the reviewer, the bug number, and a
> user oriented explanation of what the branch benefit is.  This is
> important because it gives a nice history not only for ourselves, but
> also for users which are watching and trying to make sense of how the
> project is evolving.
>
> Here is an example, from the development guideline:
>
>    Merged hidden-tetris [r=jkakar,radix] [f=73462].

You may already know this, but bzr has all of this info except the
reviewers - and LP has the reviewers.
We have built in commit properties that store:
 - the branch nick (in each of the merged revisions)
 - the fixed bugs (supplied using --fixes lp:7342)

And you could easily add a 'reviewer':['jkakar', 'radix'] property as
well, if you want. That would let you use the commit message to
describe what was changed - and still show all the metadata you want
in the branch history.

-Rob