On Tue, 15 Jun 2021, Martin Sebor wrote:
> On 6/15/21 6:56 PM, Hans-Peter Nilsson wrote:
> > On Fri, 11 Jun 2021, Martin Sebor via Gcc wrote:
> >
> > > On 6/11/21 11:32 AM, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 at 18:02, Martin Sebor wrote:
> > > > > My objection is to making our policies and tools more restrictive
> > > > > than they need to be. We shouldn't expect everyone to study whole
> > > > > manuals just to figure out how to successfully commit a change (or
> > > > > learn how to format it just the right way). It should be easy.
> > > >
> > > > I agree, to some extent. But consistency is also good. The conventions
> > > > for GNU ChangeLog formatting exist for a reason, and so do the
> > > > conventions for good Git commit messages.
> > > >
> > > > > Setting this discussion aside for a moment and using a different
> > > > > example, the commit hook rejects commit messages that don't start
> > > > > ChangeLog entries with tabs. It also rejects commit messages that
> > > > > don't list all the same test files as those changed by the commit
> > > > > (and probably some others as well). That's in my view unnecessary
> > > > > when the hook could just replace the leading spaces with tabs and
> > > >
> > > > You cannot "fix things up" in a server-side receive hook, because
> > > > changing the commit message would alter the commit hash, which would
> > > > require the committer to do a rebase to proceed. That breaks the
> > > > expected behaviour and workflow of a git repo.
> > > >
> > > > You can use the scripts on the client side to verify your commit
> > > > message before pushing, so you don't have to be surprised when the
> > > > server rejects it.
> > >
> > > That sounds like a killer argument. Do we have shared client-side
> > > scripts that could fix things up for us, or are we each on our own
> > > to write them?
> >
> > > > > automatically mention all the tests.
> > > > >
> > > > > I see this proposal as heading in the same direction. Rather than
> > > > > making the script fix things up if we get them wrong it would reject
> > > > > the commit, requiring the user to massage the ChangeLog by hand into
> > > > > an unnecessarily rigid format.
> > I hope I got your view wrong. If not: the "scripts fixing
> > things up for us" direction is flawed (compared to the "scripts
> > rejecting bad formats"), unless offered as a non-default option;
> > please don't proceed.
> >
> > Why? For one, there'll always be bugs in the scripting.
> > Mitigate those situations: while wrongly rejecting a commit is
> > bad, wrongly "fixing things up" is worse, as a general rule.
> > Better avoid that. (There's probably a popular "pattern name"
> > for what I try to describe.)
>
> The word that comes to mind is Technophobia. Is it wise to trust
> compilers to transform programs from their source form into
> executables? What if there are bugs in either? What about the OS?
> The whole computer, or the Internet? Our cars? Fortunately, there's
> more to gain than to lose by trusting automation. If there weren't
> human progress would be stuck sometime in the 1700's.
>
> But we're not talking about anything anywhere that sophisticated
> here: a sed script to copy and paste a piece of text in
> the description of a change from one place to another. It's been
> done a few times before with more important data than ChangeLogs.
Your hyperbole would be funnier if it wasn't too much over the
top. Criticizing the suggested approach for suffering from a
technical fallacy ("outsmarting the user") isn't technophobia.
Keep it in the helper scripts, don't put it in a commit hook.
brgds, H-P
