Re: Referring to commits in commit messages

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 20, 2018, 02:51 UTC
Message-ID: <20181220025111.GA24002@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20181219232948.GD228469@google.com>

On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 03:29:48PM -0800, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

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> > I'm also not sure it really matters all that much either way. If you buy
> > my argument that this is just about placing the general era of the
> > commit in the mind of the reader, then "just before v2.11" or "just
> > after v2.11" are about the same.
> 
> If it's that unreliable, I'd rather just have the hash, to be honest.

Well, that was sort of my point. :) I think the hash is the most interesting part, and everything else is gravy for the reader to save them time digging into the commit.

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> > I think that's a good idea if something is in fact being fixed. But
> > there are many other reasons to refer to another commit in prose (or
> > even outside of a commit message entirely).
> 
> Sure, but in those cases do we need the ability to query on them?

I'm not sure what you mean. We were talking about how to reference commits in prose. I think a "Fixes" trailer eliminates the need to do so (or least makes it redundant) in _some_ cases, but the other cases are still of interest.

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> To me it seems similar to having a policy on how to reference people
> in commit messages (e.g. "always include their email address"), so
> that I can grep for a contributor to see how they were involved in a
> patch.  If it's not structured data, then at some point I stop
> worrying so much about machine parsability.

Sure. All I'm really saying is "always include the hash".

-Peff