

Write good commit messages - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2013/07/write-good-commit-messages.html

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JoachimS
I think the article put the finger of something important.

I have had the fortune to work at a few places where developers treat their
RCS not only as the repo, but as a tool for communication. And the efficiency
of collaboration is truly impressive.

As an example I developed a new memory sub system for an embedded CPU (ASIC)
and as soon as I committed the new version (and stating so in the commit
message), the dev doing verification checked out the design and ran his test
suite on it. (And yes, I had run my own tests before committing.)

But comminicating through the RCS hinges on having good ways of observing
changes to the repo (post-commit mails etc) - and providing proper commit
information.

The first example in the article looks somewhat verbose for my taste. But it
states the what the commit contains, what it solves, any caveats. Very good.

When I commit a transaction that contains several related changes I usually
use something like (1) ABC, (2) XYX...

The only exception to good commit messages at one of the companies I talked
about was one dev that always used one of three messages: "little change",
"big change", "major change". Very helpful...

