Commit messages

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 02/20/2012 06:54 PM, Gedare Bloom wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 3:31 AM, Sebastian Huber
> <sebastian.huber at embedded-brains.de>  wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I think we should write down (or copy from somewhere else) some standard for
>> the commit messages.  How to format it and what to put in it.  Maybe also
>> some standard phrases.
>>
> This thread got hijacked. Anyone care to comment on standardizing
> commit messages, or to say what they have been doing in practice?

Common practice with RTEMS CVS had been

- One ChangeLog file per directory containing a "configure.ac"

This matches with GCC/gdb/binutils/newlib and many other GNU project's 
conventions.

(For historical reasons, there were some exceptions from this rule in 
RTEMS CVS).


- Each ChangeLog entry was supposed to be formated this way:

<iso-date>\t<Author> <email>
\n
\t* <relative file name>: <description>.
...

Which each line 80 chars at maximum, each description with a terminating 
"dot" and block indented by tabs.

E.g.
<snip>
2012-02-21	John Doe <jdoe at somewhere.universe.org>

	* subdir1/file1.c: Remove xyz.
	* subdir2/file2.c: Add xyz.
	* subdir3/file3.c: This change  ....
	does not want to fit ....
	... in a single line.

</snip>

This formating is mostly borrowed from GCC/gdb/binutils/newlib, but 
marginally differs from these projects' conventions.

Ralf