Re: Wrong commit message. What to do now?

[Karl Fogel]

Thanks, Stephen.  Considering the options, I guess I'll go with

  "Always review log messages of commits you are about to push."

...and just be more careful.  Subversion, though limited in other ways
of course, spoiled me in this respect, and I got used to being able to
un-shoot myself in the foot.

-Karl

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:
>Karl Fogel writes:
> > Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > >> The ChangeLog is correct; just the bzr commit message is wrong.  Does
> > >> anyone know if there's anything that can be done about this?  
> > >
> > >Aren't you the guy who work on the same office as the Bazaar hackers?
> > 
> > :-)  No -- I don't now, but anyway I was never co-located with them.
> > 
> > I wish I knew how to solve this mis-message problem.  It's a pretty
> > important use case.
>
>Real solution requires changing Bazaar
>--------------------------------------
>
>Stefan has proposed (IIRC) a solution in which the commit message is
>an annotation on the commit object, rather than part of the hashed
>metadata that gives the commit its identity.  This fills me with
>foreboding; I can expand on that, but it's "feelings" so this is not
>the place.  It certainly is technically workable, and might even be
>backward compatible with the right implementation.[1]
>
>git uses a different method, adding a concept of "annotations to a
>commit," which are not part of the commit's identity but are
>automatically displayed by tools like "git log".  AIUI, this is
>backward compatible, but old git versions can't see the annotations.
>I suspect this would be fairly easy to implement in Bazaar, but I
>don't know anything about the relevant internals.  I "like" this
>approach better, but can't prove it.
>
>Workarounds in Bazaar
>---------------------
>
>Empty commit with correct log message.  Do this on a branch if
>necessary to associate it directly with the commit whose log needs
>correction.  Append "(empty commit - correction of log message)" to
>the log message.  If on a branch, the merge log message should be
>"Correct log message of revid:stupid-bazaar-format-id-XXXXXXX."
>
>Duplicate commit on a branch with correct log message.  This has the
>potential to cause a conflict, but you'll probably get lucky.  Merge
>with merge log message as above.
>
>Tag the commit with "XXX-ignore-bogus-commit-log-use-ChangeLog" where
>XXX is a uniquifier for this style of tag.
>
>Suggested workflow changes
>--------------------------
>
>Don't use bound branches.
>
>Always review log messages of commits you are about to push.
>
>Use something like Didier Verna's patcher.el to ensure that all of the
>work on a particular change is done consistently.
>
>
>Footnotes: 
>[1]  All the dodges I've thought of that make this possible are (a)
>ugly and (b) mean that old Bazaar versions would not be able to
>display log messages written by new Bazaar versions.