Re: [PATCH v4 10/45] sequencer: trivial fix

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 12:37 PM, John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 07:33:42PM +0200, SZEDER Gábor wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 12:23:01PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> > On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 12:18 PM, SZEDER Gábor <szeder@ira.uka.de> wrote:
>> > > On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 11:40:22AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> > >> We should free objects before leaving.
>> > >>
>> > >> Signed-off-by: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
>> > >
>> > > A shortlog-friendlier subject could be: "sequencer: free objects
>> > > before leaving".
>> >
>> > I already defended my rationale for this succinct commit message:
>> >
>> > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/225609/focus=225610
>>
>> Your arguments were unconvincing.  The mere fact that I raised this
>> issue unbeknownst to the earlier posting clearly shows that there's
>> demand for descriptive subjects.
>
> Not to mention that with your subject no body is needed, making the
> overall message more succinct.

It's not succinct at all, because there's no short and quick
description of what the patch actually is; a trivial fix.

> When reading a log, as soon as I see "trivial" I become suspicious that
> someone is trying to cover something up, much like "left as an exercise
> for the reader".  If the subject says "fix memory leak" then it's
> obvious what the patch is meant to do, and when there is no subtlety to
> be explained (as there isn't in this patch) there is no need for a body.

You are not a rational person then. The commit message has absolutely
no bearing on the quality of the code. If you are less suspicious of a
commit message that says "fix memory leak", you are being completely
biased.

Whether the commit message says "fix memory leak", or "trivial fix",
or "foobar", the code might still be doing something wrong, and you
can't decide that until you look at the code.

If you don't care about the code, but still want to know what the
patch is doing, then you can look at the whole commit message, and "We
should free objects before leaving." explains that perfectly.

For the people that only read the summary, the vast majority of them
need to know what this patch is, not what it does, and when they see
"trivial fix" they most likely can skip it.

-- 
Felipe Contreras