Re: [PATCH v4 10/45] sequencer: trivial fix

[John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk>]

On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 12:53:38PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 12:37 PM, John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk> wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 07:33:42PM +0200, SZEDER Gábor wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 12:23:01PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> >> > On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 12:18 PM, SZEDER Gábor <szeder@ira.uka.de> wrote:
> >> > > On Sun, Jun 09, 2013 at 11:40:22AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> >> > >> We should free objects before leaving.
> >> > >>
> >> > >> Signed-off-by: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
> >> > >
> >> > > A shortlog-friendlier subject could be: "sequencer: free objects
> >> > > before leaving".
> >> >
> >> > I already defended my rationale for this succinct commit message:
> >> >
> >> > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/225609/focus=225610
> >>
> >> Your arguments were unconvincing.  The mere fact that I raised this
> >> issue unbeknownst to the earlier posting clearly shows that there's
> >> demand for descriptive subjects.
> >
> > Not to mention that with your subject no body is needed, making the
> > overall message more succinct.
> 
> It's not succinct at all, because there's no short and quick
> description of what the patch actually is; a trivial fix.

Is it not equally succinct to say "fix memory leak"?

> > When reading a log, as soon as I see "trivial" I become suspicious that
> > someone is trying to cover something up, much like "left as an exercise
> > for the reader".  If the subject says "fix memory leak" then it's
> > obvious what the patch is meant to do, and when there is no subtlety to
> > be explained (as there isn't in this patch) there is no need for a body.
> 
> You are not a rational person then. The commit message has absolutely
> no bearing on the quality of the code. If you are less suspicious of a
> commit message that says "fix memory leak", you are being completely
> biased.
>
> Whether the commit message says "fix memory leak", or "trivial fix",
> or "foobar", the code might still be doing something wrong, and you
> can't decide that until you look at the code.

I have a certain level of trust that commit summaries in git.git will be
accurate.  If I want to know what has changed, then "fix memory leak"
implies "no functional change"; if I see "trivial fix" then how do I
know what that is?  It could be a whitespace change, a fix to a memory
leak, a typo correction, a change to a separator in a message shown to
the user, or even a small change to corner case behaviour.

> If you don't care about the code, but still want to know what the
> patch is doing, then you can look at the whole commit message, and "We
> should free objects before leaving." explains that perfectly.

The short message is what appears in "What's Cooking", why should I need
to break out of my mail client to find out what it means?