Re: Emacs lilypond mode

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> Formatting only.  No change in behaviour.
> 
> And grammar and wording changes in the comments and changes from ##
> comments to # comments (which does not appear to make a difference
> to Emacs though as opposed to comments in some other languages).

Yes.  `#' and `##' were mixed up without a system.  I'm curious: is
there any other programming language besides Lisp (and its dialects)
where such a distinction is commonly used?

>> While in general I like a conservative approach to patches, there
>> are situations where trivial changes like the commit in question –
>> essentially whitespace only, with slight reformulations of comments
>> – should be pushed directly to the repository.  I even think that
>> they are not worth an e-mail to the list.
> 
> Stuff that has no issue number has no history to check.  There is no
> opportunity marking it for backporting to the stable branch.

This is something I admittedly haven't thought of.  However, it again
points to a major weakness of Rietveld not being able to display a
series of commits separately...

What about changing the commit message so that preliminary commits are
explicitly mentioned?  This should ease backporting.

>> I admit that unreviewed, direct commits to `staging' sometimes
>> fail, and I have already caused some trouble.  However, reverting
>> is rather easy with git.
> 
> You first need to find the culprit.  Then you need to figure out
> what problem it was supposed to fix and why it wasn't flagged by the
> regtests.

Yep.

> A notice "I pushed a formatting change to staging in preparation for
> this issue" would have notified the patch master.  It also would
> have avoided the problem that he might have tried checking the
> second patch against an unchanged master while the first patch was
> still making its way through staging.

Hmm.  A serious question: Is this *really* necessary?  My reasoning:

(1) I've already announced publicly that I'm going to work on the
    yyout2grammar script.  Given that `lilypond-devel' is a
    high-traffic list, announcing such trivial commits feels like
    posting digestion status messages on Facebook...

(2) I've waited with submitting the Rietveld issue until my
    preliminary change was in the *master* branch – since the patch
    master always have to start with a `git pull', there shouldn't be
    any problem of applying Rietveld stuff for testing.  Do I miss
    something?

> For better or worse, several people try keeping track of what
> happens to LilyPond.  Giving notice on the mailing list even when
> you are not considering the full-blown procedure for a particular
> change of relevance is, if nothing else, a courtesy and nod to them.

Basically, I agree.  What I want to know, however, is the
`significance threshold' such courtesy messages should have.  For my
formatting stuff on the Python script, I considered it not significant
enough.  Is there a single LilyPond developer who doesn't use the
wonderful `gitk' tool (or one of its siblings) to check commits?


    Werner