svn commit: r313260 - head/sys/kern

[Ngie Cooper (yaneurabeya)]

> On Feb 4, 2017, at 18:16, Steven Hartland <steven.hartland at multiplay.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Hi Mateusz could you improve on the commit message as it currently describes what is changed, which can be obtained from the diff, but not why?
> 
> I hope on one feels like I'm trying to teach them to suck eggs, as I know everyone here has a wealth of experience, but I strongly believe commit messages are a very important way of improving the overall quality of the code base by sharing with others the reason for changes, which they can then learn from. I know I for one love picking up new nuggets of knowledge from others in this way.
> 
> Also I believe this is area the project as a whole can improve on, so I don't mean to single out anyone here.
> 
> Anyway I hope people find this useful:
> 
> When I write a commit message I try to stick to the following rules which I believe helps to bring clarity for others about my actions.
> 1. First line is a brief summary of the out come of the change e.g.
> Fixed compiler warnings in nvmecontrol on 32bit platforms
> 2. Follow up paragraphs expand on #1 if needed including details about not just what but why the change was made e.g.
> Use ssize_t instead of uint32_t to prevent warnings about a comparison with different signs. Due to the promotion rules, this would only  happen on 32-bit platforms.
> 3. When writing #2 include details that would not be obvious to non-experts in the particular area.
> 
> #2 and #3 are really important to sharing knowledge that others may not know, its quite relevant to this commit msg, as while it may be obvious to you and others familiar with the atomic ops, to the rest of us we're just wondering why make this change?
> 
> N.B. The example is based on Warner's recent commit purely as an example, which had a good why, just missing the brief summary.
> 
> While on this subject are there any official guidelines to writing commit messages, if no should we create some?

	Please. It really irritates me when I find similar commit messages at $work from people that don’t describe the rationale for the commit — especially when I need to assess the risk (backport needed, testing required, etc).
Thanks!
-Ngie
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