Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi,

Saku Laesvuori <saku@laesvuori.fi> writes:

[...]

> I agree on the ChangeLogs being a weird thing to require in commit
> messages. I think of commit messages as the place where you record the
> reasons behind the change in the commit. The ChangeLog seems to just
> record the changes which the diff of the commit already automatically
> records more accurately.
>
> If someone has use cases for the ChangeLog commits, I'd like to hear
> them. Maybe there is something that can't be achieved with git history
> without ChangeLogs, but I can't think of anything. Someone mentioned
> grepping the git log with them, but I think the same thing can be done
> with git log and git blame regardless of the commit message format.

I used to think the same about ChangeLogs style commit messages, but I
have to admit that it forces some discipline on me by having me review
my changes in details and write out what I did.  It'll sometimes expose
something that'd be better kept in a separate commit, or something I did
and forgot about in the early development, that should be dropped.

There's also no stopping you adding a more conventional rationale as a
paragraph between the topic and the ChangeLog content (which should
appear at the bottom of the commit message).

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim