svn commit: r347477 - head/sys/kern

[Cy Schubert]

In message <82d76aafd3c93bc2ad2d0e04a761e2628ff1e257.camel at freebsd.org>
, Ian Le
pore writes:
> On Fri, 2019-05-10 at 23:57 -0500, Doug Moore wrote:
> > With mentor approval, I commit r347469.  I start getting email about
> > jenkins failure to build for several architectures on account of the
> > _Generic() construct I introduced in that change.
> > 
> > I whip up a patch to undo that part of r347469, and ask for mentor
> > approval.  Meanwhile, mentor authorizes me in email to revert
> > r347469.
> > 
> > I try apply applying the fix-patch, and get email that it was
> > rejected
> > for lack of reviewer.  In retrospect, it seems to have been committed
> > anyway as r347472.
> > 
> > Thinking that things are still broken, I do what my mentor pre-
> > approved
> > earlier and revert back to before r347469.  A patch to redo r347469,
> > without _Generic(), awaits mentor approval.
> > 
> > I realize that breaking the build and then committing without mentor
> > approval in my first week as committer isn't a good beginning.  
> > Sorry
> > about that.
> > 
> > At least I have no social media presence, so there's that.
> > 
> > Doug Moore
> > 
> > 
>
> The important point is that the commit message should have said why. 
> It doesn't have to be a whole novel, just something like "because
> _Generic() isn't supported on all platforms" would've been good.
>
> In general, for every commit, I ask myself "If someone 3 years from now
> is debugging a problem and they're looking at the changes that have
> happened to this code over time, will my commit message be helpful to
> that process?"  Very often in that situation, what the person needs to
> know isn't "what changed" so much as "why did this change happen?"

I totally agree. I am that guy reviewing commits, not just FreeBSD 
commits but those of other open source projects and at $JOB as well. 
Sure, reading the code provides the complete story however when pressed 
for time one must prioritize what to look at first.

Touching on another log message issue, some of the most time consuming 
are other open source project commits which say "pull request from ..." 
which make more than one alteration in the same commit.


-- 
Cheers,
Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com>
FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy at FreeBSD.org>   Web:  http://www.FreeBSD.org

	The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few.