[csms-dev] Messages on CVS commits

[Ross G. <ro...@sa...>]

When committing changes to CVS it is important that a message is 
attached to the commit. There are three reasons for this:

1) It makes reading of the CVS mails much easier for the rest of us

2) The messages are archived and a meaningful message means we can 
quickly search the archives to find out what someone did to make XYZ 
happen - I know I can't remember all the solutions I implement

3) Soon (ish) I will be implementing a system that extracts the messages 
and created an automated change log for new releases

It may seem obvious when committing the files what the change is, but 
that's because you made the change and you are reading the file. It's 
not obvious to the rest of us and even less obvious to the mail archive 
search engine.

There should never be the need to commit experimental changes to CVS so 
there should always be a meaningful message (for example, "Changed XYZ 
to ABC as a fix for Bug #"). However, at the moment players.xml needs to 
be changed experimentally some times (not a good use of CVS but this 
will change soon). In this instance I suggest a message such as "Attempt 
to fix bug #" is used. Your CVS client should allow you to repeat the 
message you used for the last commit so this shouldn't be too much of a 
bind.

Ross