[GUSDEV] Writing Commit Messages

[Michael S. <msa...@pc...>]

I wanted to propose a couple of recommendations for writing good commit
messages.  Ultimately, I'd like to use the commit messages to effortlessly
track changes in GUS release, which is partly motivation for this.

* Always provide a log message.

* Use the log message to address the reasons behind the change, not just the
change.  For example (and sorry to pick on Debbie-- she's just the most
recent committer):

"remove statement to skip entries from tpg"

This is obvious from the code, but I have no idea *why* the tpg entries were
skipped to begin with, and now what change is allowing them to be processed.

* When fixing a bug from bugzilla, reference the bug number.  For example:

"Fixed bug #27, 'unable to run LoadTaxon'"

While this message doesn't really provide many details, it points to the bug
id that should provide a wealth of information about the debugging process.

* Try to avoid "fixed typo" log messages.  Sometimes, however, that's all
that happened :).  Which raises another point:  test and compile (perl -c)
*before* you check-in.

Any other ideas for source control log messages best practices?  I'll start
a wiki where we can track these.

--Mike