Re: Experimental repositories on git.gnome.org

[Sandy Armstrong <sanfordarmstrong gmail com>]

On 01/14/2009 04:10 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:
> With heroic efforts on the conversion scripts, Kristian has finished an
> initial run at converting all svn.gnome.org repositories and putting
> them on git.gnome.org.

This is truly awesome work!  Get job everybody.

> Notes on commit messages
> ========================
>
> In the conversion process, Kristian is running a script that changes a
> ChangeLog-paste commit message like:
>
> ====
> 2005-08-09  Owen Taylor<otaylor redhat com>
>
>          * configure.in: Strip out all Xft, FreeType, and pangoxft checking.
>          Rewrite X checks to use pkg-config as much as possible.
>
>          * gdk/win32/gdkfont-win32.c (gdk_font_from_description_for_display): Make
>          this return Arial always to avoid using PangoWin32FontMap. (X11 backend
>          has always been returned "fixed" for a long time)
>
>          * gdk/linux-fb/gdkdrawable-fb2.c: Remove draw_glyphs() implementations,
>          fall through to the default implementation in terms of Cairo.
>
>          * gdk/linux-fb/gdkdrawable-fb2.c (gdk_fb_draw_text): Use gdk_draw_glyphs()
>          on the wrapper rather than gdk_fb_draw_glyphs().
> ====
>
> to:
>
> ====
> commit cd9ecd30e479f7c47a84ffa354643fb90a7b9a4b
> Author: Owen Taylor<otaylor src gnome org>
> Date:   Wed Aug 10 02:31:51 2005 +0000
>
>      Strip out all Xft, FreeType, and pangoxft checking. Rewrite X
>      checks to use pkg-config as much as possible.
>
>      Make this return Arial always to avoid using PangoWin32FontMap. (X11
>      backend has always been returned "fixed" for a long time)
>
>      Remove draw_glyphs() implementations, fall through to the default
>      implementation in terms of Cairo.
>
>      Use gdk_draw_glyphs() on the wrapper rather than
>      gdk_fb_draw_glyphs()
> ====
>
> Stripping the header line and leading whitespace is pretty clearly a
> good thing (though it can occasionally lose author information when it
> is different from the committer). Stripping the file names is a bit more
> controversial.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not really sure I understand why 
file name references are being removed.  I guess you have a shorter 
message, but you have basically no context when you run `git log` to see 
what's been going on.  The example you give above is pretty meaningless 
to me, and I'm pretty sure it would be hard to follow a similar message 
in modules I maintain or contribute to.

Is this the common convention in projects using git?  If so, I really 
don't understand what commit message format has to do with choice of 
source control [1]...

Just my $.02,
Sandy

[1] Besides the headers, which are an obvious win if they can be 
converted correctly.