Re: git gcc-commit-mklog doesn't extract PR number to ChangeLog

[Martin Sebor via Gcc]

On 6/16/21 2:49 PM, Jason Merrill wrote:

On 6/15/21 11:42 PM, Jason Merrill wrote:

On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 10:04 PM Martin Sebor via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org <mailto:gcc@gcc.gnu.org>> wrote:

    On 6/15/21 6:56 PM, Hans-Peter Nilsson wrote:
     > On Fri, 11 Jun 2021, Martin Sebor via Gcc wrote:
     >
     >> On 6/11/21 11:32 AM, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
     >>> On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 at 18:02, Martin Sebor wrote:

     >>>> My objection is to making our policies and tools more restrictive      >>>> than they need to be.  We shouldn't expect everyone to study whole      >>>> manuals just to figure out how to successfully commit a change (or

     >>>> learn how to format it just the right way).  It should be easy.
     >>>
     >>> I agree, to some extent. But consistency is also good. The
    conventions
     >>> for GNU ChangeLog formatting exist for a reason, and so do the
     >>> conventions for good Git commit messages.
     >>>

     >>>> Setting this discussion aside for a moment and using a different      >>>> example, the commit hook rejects commit messages that don't start      >>>> ChangeLog entries with tabs.  It also rejects commit messages that      >>>> don't list all the same test files as those changed by the commit      >>>> (and probably some others as well).  That's in my view unnecessary      >>>> when the hook could just replace the leading spaces with tabs and

     >>>> automatically mention all the tests.
     >>>>

     >>>> I see this proposal as heading in the same direction. Rather than

     >>>> making the script fix things up if we get them wrong it would
    reject
     >>>> the commit, requiring the user to massage the ChangeLog by
    hand into
     >>>> an unnecessarily rigid format.
     >>>

     >>> You cannot "fix things up" in a server-side receive hook, because

     >>> changing the commit message would alter the commit hash, which
    would
     >>> require the committer to do a rebase to proceed. That breaks the
     >>> expected behaviour and workflow of a git repo.
     >>>
     >>> You can use the scripts on the client side to verify your commit

     >>> message before pushing, so you don't have to be surprised when the

     >>> server rejects it.
     >>

     >> That sounds like a killer argument.  Do we have shared client-side      >> scripts that could fix things up for us, or are we each on our own

     >> to write them?
     >
     > I hope I got your view wrong.  If not: the "scripts fixing
     > things up for us" direction is flawed (compared to the "scripts
     > rejecting bad formats"), unless offered as a non-default option;
     > please don't proceed.
     >
     > Why?  For one, there'll always be bugs in the scripting.
     > Mitigate those situations: while wrongly rejecting a commit is
     > bad, wrongly "fixing things up" is worse, as a general rule.
     > Better avoid that.  (There's probably a popular "pattern name"
     > for what I try to describe.)

    The word that comes to mind is Technophobia.  Is it wise to trust
    compilers to transform programs from their source form into
    executables?  What if there are bugs in either?  What about the OS?
    The whole computer, or the Internet?  Our cars?  Fortunately, there's
    more to gain than to lose by trusting automation.  If there weren't
    human progress would be stuck sometime in the 1700's.

    But we're not talking about anything anywhere that sophisticated
    here: a sed script to copy and paste a piece of text in
    the description of a change from one place to another.  It's been
    done a few times before with more important data than ChangeLogs.

git gcc-commit-mklog already automates most of the process.  It could also automate adding [PRxxxxx] to the first line.  Is that what you're asking for?

Like, say:

I don't think this solves the problem Xionghu Luo was asking about:
  https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-June/236346.html
i.e., they did have a [PRnnnn] in the one line subject but not in
their ChangeLog entries.  It also not clear if they used mklog.py
at all.  IME, mklog.py already puts in a [PRnnnn] near the top of
a patch if it finds in one of the tests.  Though it doesn't seem
to put in the ChangeLog entries.  Odd.

I was suggesting to make this (and the other things the commit
hook rejects commit for) happen automatically by running a script
at the same time as git commit.

But to be clear, I'm not asking for anything for myself.  Although
I use mklog.py I have my own script that does what I suggest that
I could go back to.  I responded to this thread because I think
these minute details could be automated for everyone's benefit.
Before moving to Git we talked about doing much more, including
automatically running a format/style checker on the patch and
(IIRC) Jeff even wanted it to do some basic tweaks on its own
(like replace spaces with tabs).

Martin