[Maas-devel] commit messages

[Julian Edwards]

I agree.  Bad commit messages are one of my bugbears, and I expect the 
reviewers to be checking them as part of the review.

So, reviewers, please crack down on commit messages as much as you take care 
to review the code.

I'm not sure that we need a massive description as below, but something that 
at least conveys a decent amount of information to the casual browser.  MP 
descriptions and bugs should give all the minute details.

As you say, this:
> [bug=] NodeGroups update_leases API call.
is pretty awful.

J

On Wednesday 29 August 2012 08:56:42 Scott Moser wrote:
> Hi,
>    We have a good review process in place for maas.  I'd like to propose
> that we shoot to have good coherent commit messages on the merge commits
> to trunk.
>    I understand that the reviews are always available, and that I can also
> view merged commits, but when I'm looking at 'bzr log' I usually end with
> some little snippet that hardly gives justification.
>    Worse, most of the time the developer who proposed the merge actually
> *wrote* a good description and justification in the merge proposal, but
> the commit message was not set to it.  Without some or possibly some tool
> that I'm not aware of, those messages are lost to me.
> 
>    In smoser's ideal world we have a short (<70 characters) summary,
> followed by a larger description (ie, what many git based projects use).
> Again, I think people are already writing this stuff, we're just not
> putting it in the merge commit message.
> 
>    Thoughts?
> 
>    I'd like to see commit messages less like
> [bug=] NodeGroups update_leases API call.
>    and more like:
> [bug=] This branch change the way the DNS dev
> service is created/started so that it includes the MAAS-specific DNS
> configuration.
> 
>   Each time the DNS service is started:
>   - re-generate the DNS service basic config file (named.conf)
>   - use the command set_up_dns to create MAAS DNS config files (rndc
>     config)
>   - use the command get_named_conf to include the main MAAS DNS config
>     file from the DNS service config file (run/named/named.conf).
>   - start the DNS service.
> 
>   = Pre-imp =
> 
>   I talked with Gavin about this.