[Qemu-trivial] commit log tips [was: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH trivial] vl: Avoid to close stdout after finish 'writeconfig' option]

[Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>]

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On 04/22/2014 01:18 PM, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On 22 April 2014 17:31, Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com> wrote:
>> Hmm, maybe we should update the qemu wiki?
>> http://wiki.qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch doesn't mention the qemu
>> preferred style (you pointed to the GNOME style, but at least GNU
>> coreutils explicitly prefers lowercase).
>>
>> At any rate, I'm not going to reject a patch based on capitalization,
> 
> Yeah, it doesn't really seem worth trying to enforce niceties
> of style here -- the effort required doesn't seem to really match
> the benefit, and we already have a lot of hoops we make new
> submitters jump through. "[file or area being patched]: [reasonably
> descriptive short summary]" is about the limit I personally feel
> comfortable insisting on.

So, given this discussion, I enhanced the existing paragraph in the wiki
page mentioned above to include a couple more sentences:

'''Write a good commit message'''. QEMU follows the usual standard for
git commit messages: the first line (which becomes the email subject
line) is "subsystem: single line summary of change". Whether the "single
line summary of change" starts with a capital is a matter of taste, but
we prefer that the summary does not end in ".". Look at <code>git
short-log 30</code> for an idea of sample subject lines.  Then there is
a blank line and a more detailed description of the patch, another blank
and your Signed-off-by: line. The body of the commit message is a good
place to document why your change is important. Don't include comments
like "This is a suggestion for fixing this bug" (they can go below the
"---" line in the email so they don't go into the final commit message).

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org


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