Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi Katherine,

Katherine Cox-Buday <cox.katherine.e@gmail.com> writes:

> On 9/5/23 10:01 AM, Simon Tournier wrote:
>
>> Well, somehow, I consider the commit message format similarly as coding
>> style.  We can discuss which one is better than the other when at the
>> end it only reflects some artificial preferences and for the sake of any
>> project one needs to be arbitrarily picked.  Why not ChangeLog?
>
> The distinction I draw is that I can usually run a linter against a
> coding style.
>
> I don't care very much what the standard for commit messages is other
> than if it has an expectation of structure, I be able to run a tool to
> tell me if it's wrong.
>
> In other words, the overhead isn't "I don't like this standard", it's
> "I can't find a way to reliably adhere to the standard".

'git log' should provide ample examples.  The format is not strict, and
it doesn't matter overly as long as it conveys a summary of the changes
accurately; it is meant for us humans.  The format is described
summarily in the GNU Standards document; to read it, you can run:

  guix shell standards info-reader -- info '(standards) ChangeLog'

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim