Re: Commit subject line

On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:
>
> On 05/06/2013 10:19 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2013-05-03 14:54:23 -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 05/03/2013 02:43 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnakangas(at)vmware(dot)com> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 03.05.2013 20:56, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 01:42:33PM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Yeah. The recommended style is to have the first line be 50 chars or
>>>>>>>> less, which is a bit unfortunate - it can be a challenge to keep to
>>>>>>>> that limit for a meaningful or comprehensive subject.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Oh, that's tight. I didn't know about the 50 char recommendation. I've
>>>>>> tried to keep mine < 76 chars, so that when you do "git log", it fits
>>>>>> on
>>>>>> a 80 char display with the 4 char indentation that git log does.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yeah, that's news to me too. I've been using a 75-char line length for
>>>>> all my commit messages since we switched to git. It's frequently tough
>>>>> enough to get a useful headline into 75 chars --- I can't see trying to
>>>>> do 50.
>>>>
>>>> man git-commit says:
>>>>
>>>> Though not required, it’s a good idea to begin the commit message
>>>> with a single short (less than 50 character) line summarizing the
>>>> change, followed by a blank line and then a more thorough
>>>> description. Tools that turn commits into email, for example, use
>>>> the first line on the Subject: line and the rest of the commit in
>>>> the body.
>>>>
>>>> I'd be happy to use 75 or whatever if we could convince the email tools
>>>> not
>>>> to truncate the subject lines at 50.
>>>
>>> Its worth to notice that neither git nor the kernel adhere to that
>>> limit...
>>
>> FWIW, the tool we use to generate the commit emails truncate it at 80
>> (minus the "pgsql: " header). We can increase that, but it only fixes
>> the email one, and not the one that people look at on the web...
>
>
> In practice, something else must be further truncating it, at about 64 chars
> by the look of it - see for example
> <http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/E1UVTFj-00079k-2r@gemulon.postgresql.org>

Ha. Good point. There's actually a bit of a bug in the code there :)
What it does is limit the length to 80-length("pgsql: $shortmsg"),
which is 64. It is supposed to limit it to 80-length("pgsql: ")..
(Since it substitutes the actual commit message where $shortmsg is
found).

That's fixable though :)

> Re your other point, github at least seems to elide at about 70 chars - see
> <https://github.com/postgres/postgres/commit/b42ea7981ce1e7484951a22662937541066d8647>
> - where Joe used a very long first sentence rather than a show summary line.
> I don't know if gitweb could be induced to elide after a greater length - I
> bet it could fairly easily. There does seem to be lots of spare screen real
> estate on the commit summary and history pages, which I think is where this
> occurs.

Possibly. I can never find my way around that one though, and making
any modifications also has us ending up maintaining what's basically a
fork - unless there's always a config argument for it somewhere.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/