From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Junio C Hamano Subject: Re: [GIT] Networking Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:29:25 -0800 Message-ID: <7vvczpdvve.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> References: <20110310.153444.115930379.davem@davemloft.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: David Miller , akpm@linux-foundation.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org To: Linus Torvalds Return-path: In-Reply-To: (Linus Torvalds's message of "Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:49:40 -0800") Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Linus Torvalds writes: > On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 3:34 PM, David Miller wrote: >> ... > Look at that commit message: > > Merge branch 'master' of /home/davem/src/GIT/linux-2.6/ > > That is literally the WHOLE message. Ask yourself: is that commit > doing anything useful? Does the commit message explain what it is > doing, and why you are doing it? > ... > Now, I admit that it's a git usability bug: for normal "git commit", > git will _force_ you to write a message, and sadly, for merges, I made > it instead just do the message automatically. My bad. I designed it > for the kind of merges I do, where the the automatic merge message > actually tells you what the merge is all about. But for back-merges, > the automatic message is totally worthless, and it is DOUBLY worthless > when you do it the way you do it, namely from some local directory of > your own. I admit that I back-merged a few times my own master to a largish topic branch, when updates that happened on the master front since the topic forked from it helped to clean up the topic. When I did so, I knew better to say "git commit --amend" to reword the merge message to say something like: Merge 'master' to 'jc/frotz' for xyzzy feature so it wasn't a huge problem for me personally to keep the history useful, but I agree that it would be better to make it harder for mortals to just backmerge without doing the rewording. The question is how. Perhaps when the merge is made from the default upstream, i.e. with "git pull" (no parameters) or "git merge @{u}", we should automatically give the user an editor?