commit IDs in changelog messsages (was: Introductory mail)

[Adeodato Simó]

* Stefano Zacchiroli [Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:41:33 +0100]:

> On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 11:22:56AM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> > But instead of one parser, I'd really rather think of it as a number
> > of parsers, each getting a chance. So Closes would be handled by the
> > dak-bts parser, and Git: by a git parser, SVN: by an SVN parser,
> > etc.

> Consider the following two snippets of changelog entry metadata (which
> I think is what we are aiming to generalize):

> 1)	(Closes: #1234567, git: fba134)
> 2)	(Closes: #1234567, Commit: git:fba134)

> I do agree that no matter what, if you are not git-aware, the git
> commit numbers is useless for you. That can't be otherwise.

> Still, even if you are not git-aware, in snippet (2) you can recognize
> that "git:fba134" is a commit identifier. You don't know what to do
> with that, but at least you know that it is.  On the contrary, in
> snippet (1) you aren't even able to understand that it is a commit
> identifier.

> So, for instance, you can't do "neutral" stuff like passing it to some
> other applications which comes after you in a processing pipeline
> which *might* be git-aware themselves.

> A real-life use case is dpkg-parsechangelog. With snippet (2) it can
> output a commit identifier and tell to the world that the VCS in use
> is "git", even if dpkg-parsechangelog is not git-aware itself. With
> snippet (1) the only possibility is to add to dpkg-parsechangelog the
> list of recognized VCS tags.

> It is well possible that this fuss is excessive, as it introduces a
> more cumbersome syntax we do not tolerate for a relative minor
> gain. Still, the right(tm) design seems to be (2). Maybe it is just
> not worth. YMMV.

Though I agree with your reasoning here, I find (2) a tad too verbose
(mostly because of the colon appearing twice, which requires two passes
from your brain, if you see what I mean). May I suggest:

    3) (Closes: #1234567, Vcs-Git:fba134)

And Vcs-Hg, Vcs-Bzr, and so on. How does that sound?

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
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