Re: [PATCH v2 4/8] shortlog: match commit trailers with --group

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 28, 2020, 17:01 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq1rilomx6.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20200928031752.GA3059492@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> I wondered if this might confuse people reading the series, and almost
> called attention to it in the cover letter. Now that you've presumably
> read through and figured it out, is it worth going back and amending the
> commit message? It's more of a point for reviewers, I think, but perhaps
> somebody reading the commits later would care.

When I read history older than the immediate past, I usuall start at the point 'git blame' found and then go back---going forward is much less natural operation. If my "git blame" session happens to hit an earlier part of this series, perhaps the future-me would get a wrong impression that originally the feature was in a limited form and was extended later in a separate series? I dunno.

I did wish the log message said what was going on while reading, but that is a perfectionist in me speaking, and not a complaint that log messages that did not say the future plans in the series were offense that deserves a rejection. A good summary in "What's cooking" report would become a merge commit log message, and we can teach users to go from 'git blame', find where the entire series was merged to the mainline and then read from there---and it would be sufficient if the summary of the topic described the endgame well.