Re: Template for commit messages

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On 01/29/2016 03:05 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> >Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >
> >>I think the best question to ask is:
> >>
> >>"What is the problem we are trying to solve?"
> >
> >The problem is alluring more patch reviewers, beta testers and bug
> >reporters.
>
> Do we really want patch reviewers, beta testers and bug reporters that are
> doing it because we created a fixed template for commit messages that may
> mention their name?

We want *some* patch reviewers and beta testers. We don't really care
what's their motivation, as long as their do their thing. The
motivating factor is supposed to be getting credit -- not in the commit
messages (because other people don't look at those) but having their
names appear in the release notes.

> >One of the offers is to credit them (I'm not exactly clear
> >on what is the group to benefit from this, but the phrasing used in the
> >meeting was "contributors to the release") by having a section somewhere
> >in the release notes with a list of their names.
>
> I can see this as being a nice thing but knowing that someone is a
> contributor isn't hard. There is a contributor list on the website and it is
> obvious from mail lists, archives and simple searches who is actually
> participating.

It's not obvious, which is why this is being discussed at all, and the
contributor list in the website is useless for the purposes at hand.
And it is hard, which is why the issue was raised in the first place --
heck, when this was mentioned, somebody said "but we would have to wait
until 9.7 because we don't have that information in existing commit
messages in 9.6 already" (he was promptly made to shut up, because most
if not all committers are already crediting reviewers in their commit
messages and we don't want to wait *two years* to implement this idea.)

> >So the problem, of course, is collating that list of names, and the
> >point of having a commit template is to have a single, complete source
> >of truth from where to extract the info.
>
> I think the problem is that we think that this is somehow going to allure
> more people.

How come the issue of crediting people comes up so often, if it is, as
you seem to be saying, so worthless?

> I also think it is a quick step from:
>
> Oh, Alvaro helped a lot with that.
>
> vs
>
> On, 2Q wrote that feature.

I'm not sure what's your point here, but the release notes are going to
list individuals, not companies. (FWIW if it were up to me committers
and major contributors would not be in the list anyway.)

--
Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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