4 ms·
Imperative form is recommended in Git documentation itself and it's what the Linux kernel uses[1]. It makes a lot of sense if you don't view DVCSes as a fancy
by 4ad 14y ago
Imperative form is recommended in Git documentation itself and it's what the Linux kernel uses[1].
It makes a lot of sense if you don't view DVCSes as a fancy history mechanism but as a patch management system. Here, take this bunch of patches. What will I do if I'll merge them? I'll fix X, add option Z and port Q to ARM. Now let's say I also want to backport some patches to a stable branch, I'll take one from this branch, some from others and I'll fix X, fix Y and fix Z, but on ARM nothing works without the ARM commit, so on that branch I'll port Q to ARM.
[1] http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/SubmittingPatches;h=ece3c77482b3ff006b973f1ed90b708e26556862;hb=HEAD#l12 http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/...
- pattern 14y agoThank you for that link, I'm glad to have that data point in my head now. At first I misread your explanation of DVCS as a patch management system and was going to say that non-imperative forms of commit summaries would function similarly. Now I understand your point, and I thank you again for explaining a useful way to conceptualize what merging multiple git commits together actually accomplishes.