Robert Elz wrote: > I totally agree with this - and it is worse when included in commit logs > wherte it will remain, visible, and actually viewed, forever (unlike even > in a mailing list, which while archived forever, somewhere, usually > falls quickly out of view.)
Searching for archived email messages is actually easier for me than grepping a huge cvs log output. After looking at email archives I see that many active developers are "guilty" of committing 'hi dev@' messages. If there are enough people who oppose this, they're welcome to start a new thread on appropriate mailing list. > If you feel the need to (in a friendly, or not-so way) to make sure the > developer who got things wrong knows about it, send e-mail. That's > probably a good idea in any case, their view on how to fix it might be > different than yours. If you need a fix quickly, make it in your local > tree - it is not required that all changes be committed the instant you > finish typing them! If you think it likely that others might be seeing > the same problem, send your fix to the appropriate mailing list. > If whoever broke things then doesn't fix it, or ask you to go ahead and > commit your fix, within a reasonable time, then the fix can just be > committed (but by this time, the use for a "hi xxx" will have long since > passed). Even a very friendly email means that you 1. waiting for a fix and dev@ may feel an urgency to commit the fix 2. you fixed it in a local tree and you will later have to deal with a conflict if dev@ needs to tweak your patch for whatever reason. On the other hand, 'hi dev@' notifies dev@ after the fact. They don't have to do anything to fix things. -- Alex
