On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Simon Laws<[email protected]> wrote: > ...snip > >> It would be much more burdensome >> to do multiple commits so that a tailored comment can be used for each >> separate change. > > I'm not for a moment suggesting that the number of commits made should > be dictated by the commit comments. >
I am ;) Well ok not "dictate" but it should be a consideration. Apache projects and Commit-Then-Review only work when others know and understand whats going on, easy to grok commits helps get that group understanding. If a change is hard to understand people don't bother trying, so we miss out on that initial review that may catch some bugs, but also as others start getting out of touch they are less likely to help maintain that bit of code which results in bugs not getting fixed promptly, mailing lists questions going unanswered, documentation not getting updated etc. In the extreme eventually circumstance will require that that bit of function must be updated but as others don't really understand it instead of improving the existing code it gets ripped out and rewritten. Thats a very inefficient way to develop the project and also will likely make the original coder less likely to continue contributing. Of course there are no hard rules on this and it depends on the change and the preferences and style of the person making the change but IMHO it is worth for the greater good spending a little extra time to try and see if a big change can be broken up into several smaller easy to understand commits. ...ant
