Dear team, I notice that we've become a bit lax at writing proper commit messages. Especially with squash merges, it is now common to see in the long list of items like "polish things up a bit" and "more verbose". What do you think is the best way of handling this? Perhaps we should copy the PR description into the commit message, instead of having a list of random gibberish? Or maybe the first commit should have a detailed description, and then we simply cut the rest of the items from that list? Stéfan
Hey Stéfan, some ideas on that: https://youtu.be/ZNaArLZCPMI. I liked the talk, maybe there's something we could use here. Alex On Thu, 2021-07-29 at 12:02 -0700, Stefan van der Walt wrote:
Dear team,
I notice that we've become a bit lax at writing proper commit messages. Especially with squash merges, it is now common to see in the long list of items like "polish things up a bit" and "more verbose".
What do you think is the best way of handling this?
Perhaps we should copy the PR description into the commit message, instead of having a list of random gibberish? Or maybe the first commit should have a detailed description, and then we simply cut the rest of the items from that list?
Stéfan _______________________________________________ scikit-image mailing list -- scikit-image@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to scikit-image-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/scikit-image.python.org/ Member address: alex.desiqueira@igdore.org --
Dr. Alexandre de Siqueira Berkeley Institute for Data Science - BIDS 190 Doe Library University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 United States Lattes CV: 3936721630855880 ORCID: 0000-0003-1320-4347 Github: alexdesiqueira Twitter: alexdesiqueira --------------------------------------------------
On Thu, Jul 29, 2021, at 12:08, Alexandre de Siqueira wrote:
some ideas on that: https://youtu.be/ZNaArLZCPMI. I liked the talk, maybe there's something we could use here.
This is good. Here is the written version: https://blogs.vmware.com/opensource/2021/04/14/improve-your-git-commits-in-t... Stéfan
Dear Stéfan,
Since I just did *not* do it :s ... I realize that it could/should be the
responsibility of the core dev who is squashing and merging to reword, if
necessary, the 'main' commit message (which, if left unchanged, ends up
being the PR title) and, perhaps(?), even the secondary commit messages
(corresponding to the original individual commits).
If anything, I would think that squash merges improve the situation,
otherwise those 'long list[s] of items like "polish things up a bit" and
"more verbose"' end up linearly in the main commit history (
https://github.com/scikit-image/scikit-image/commits/main)... which is even
worse, isn't it? Am I missing something?
Otherwise, I believe in:
* adding a line about commit messages in
https://scikit-image.org/docs/stable/contribute.html;
* spreading the word about good/standard commit messages whenever we get a
chance, whether formally or informally (e.g.,
https://github.com/scikit-image/scikit-image/pull/5479#issuecomment-88194815...
).
Cheers,
Marianne
On Thu, Jul 29, 2021 at 9:28 PM Stefan van der Walt
On Thu, Jul 29, 2021, at 12:08, Alexandre de Siqueira wrote:
some ideas on that: https://youtu.be/ZNaArLZCPMI. I liked the talk, maybe there's something we could use here.
This is good. Here is the written version:
https://blogs.vmware.com/opensource/2021/04/14/improve-your-git-commits-in-t...
Stéfan _______________________________________________ scikit-image mailing list -- scikit-image@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to scikit-image-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/scikit-image.python.org/ Member address: marianne.corvellec@ens-lyon.org
Hi Marianne, On Thu, Aug 5, 2021, at 08:28, Marianne Corvellec wrote:
Since I just did *not* do it :s ... I realize that it could/should be the responsibility of the core dev who is squashing and merging to reword, if necessary, the 'main' commit message (which, if left unchanged, ends up being the PR title) and, perhaps(?), even the secondary commit messages (corresponding to the original individual commits).
I think that makes sense. I'm thinking: unless it is clear that the author tidied up their commit history (rebased, edited each individual commit message to be descriptive), we should simply wipe the concatenated commit message list and fill it out as per your suggestion (sensible title, sensible description).
If anything, I would think that squash merges improve the situation, otherwise those 'long list[s] of items like "polish things up a bit" and "more verbose"' end up linearly in the main commit history (https://github.com/scikit-image/scikit-image/commits/main)... which is even worse, isn't it? Am I missing something?
It does improve things, but it's still pretty ugly. Just do `git log` and see how much useful information is in there; it's mainly gibberish over the last few commits (with the exception of Mauro Silberberg's beautiful commit message in 51410b6b1c0688d767eae5ac03bc849e77b13da5).
* adding a line about commit messages in https://scikit-image.org/docs/stable/contribute.html; * spreading the word about good/standard commit messages whenever we get a chance, whether formally or informally (e.g., https://github.com/scikit-image/scikit-image/pull/5479#issuecomment-88194815...).
+1 on adding guidance to the documentation. W.r.t. suggestions to contributors: I'd focus on structure over style, and then just have core members fix them up as needed upon merge. Best regards, Stéfan
participants (3)
-
Alexandre de Siqueira -
Marianne Corvellec -
Stefan van der Walt