Re: [GSoC Proposal/RFC] Rolling commit message writing

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 30, 2010, 17:27 UTC
Message-ID: <20100330172725.GF17763@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <32541b131003291331y3ae5ca23la33466d588c1b9e1@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 04:31:00PM -0400, Avery Pennarun wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Secondly, I'm concerned that if you can't remember the description of
> your entire commit by the time you commit it, then your commit is too
> big.  The usual solution is to create multiple, smaller commits that
> are easy to describe.  If at the end you find yourself with too many
> commits, you can always join them together with git rebase.

That was my first thought, too. I like your suggestion elsewhere in the thread of making many small commits, and then squashing them later if you like.

Still, I can see how people might prefer to use this as part of their workflow, so I am not against the feature itself.

However, I am really concerned with it as a GSoC project. It just doesn't seem like a big enough feature to take the whole summer. In the schedule, there is a week of implementing "git add -p --add-with-message". It seems like that should be hours, not days.

I wonder if it could be rolled into a more comprehensive proposal concerning commit workflows (though I admit, I don't personally have any other ideas in the area).

-Peff

PS Daniel (and other potential GSoC'ers who are reading), please don't take this as discouragement of presenting proposals that aren't on the ideas wiki. I really really like the concept of somebody working on their own itch, as I think they tend to have a clearer idea of what the solution should look like. I'm just concerned this particular proposal isn't big enough.