Format for JDK 6/7 changeset comments?

[Andrew Haley]

Mark Reinhold writes:
 > > Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:47:35 +0000
 > > From: Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com>
 > 
 > > ...
 > > 
 > > I am trying to make sure that all the information about every change
 > > is in a searchable form that doesn't require special software.  I'm
 > > trying to make sure that if (God forbid) a nuke fell on Sun central,
 > > everyone else would just carry on with their work, with all of the
 > > information they need easily to have.
 > 
 > In general I think this is a good principle.
 > 
 > > I'll explain what we do at GNU, and why I think it's a good thing.
 > > 
 > > The comment we write for a change is written and submitted for review
 > > along with the patch.  When the patch is approved, this pre-written
 > > comment is used for the version control commit.  So, when you look at
 > > a patch submission you can immediately tie it with the commit.
 > 
 > So does the comment describing the technical nature of the change ever
 > wind up anywhere else -- e.g., in a Bugzilla entry?

That's right.  Once the commit is done, the comment gets automatically
copied into the Bugzilla entry.  The version control system does this
as a side-effect of the commit.  The commit message is also mailed to
everyone on the CC list for that bug.

Here's an example: http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14315

On that page is the initial bug report, the patch, some discussion,
and the commit comment, along with URLs that point to the VCS.  It's
not perfect in that there isn't an automatically created link from the
Bugzilla entry to the discussion on the mailing list.

 > The usual practice at Sun has been to put that kind of information
 > into the evaluation section of the bug report.

That's fine too, but it would be nice to have all that CC'd to a
mailing list.

 > Some teams have also put that information, or a variant of it, into
 > TeamWare delta or putback comments.  That's always struck me as
 > busywork, however, and it has all the other disadvantages that've
 > already been mentioned, in particular immutability.
 > 
 > If bug updates are also always made available in e-mail, isn't this
 > sufficient?  We can do other things to cross-link the information
 > too; e.g., change notifications could include the URLs of all the
 > related bug-database entries.

That sounds fine.

Andrew.

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