On Thu, 16 Sep 2010, Jonathan Gordon wrote:
I honestly don't see the point. I don't remember anyone ever complaining
about commit messages except extremely trivial commits, so really all this
would do is slow down actual development and make committing either more
controversial (in that not doing it right could potentially blow up every
time) or more annoying.
I disagree.
First, yes it will slow down the actual commit with a few seconds or minutes
for the single individual that does that work.
But on the other hand, it may very well speed up how other developers read and
understand the change, now and in the future. Since the others are likely
several orders of magnitude more it pays off really fast in total.
Also, I think that a "template" or "guidelines" on how to do the commit
message will make you think one extra time before you fire away the commit,
and in the long run that doesn't only improve the message and explanation of
the change, it does in fact also often make you rethink your change once more
and possibly change it before you send it off. At least I can witness that it
has had that effect on me.
--
/ daniel.haxx.se
