This document is intended to capture some of the policies we would like all committers to follow when it comes to checking in changes into our GIT repository.
Each commit to the repository must have a non-empty log message. The message format should start with a one-line short summary prefixed with the Jira issue number. If you do not have a Jira issue number, create one before you commit. The short summary need not be a complete sentence with proper punctuation and grammar since it is best to keep it to 72 characters or less.
After the short summary line, you may continue the message with one or more paragraphs separated by an empty line. The empty line after the short summary is necessary if you want to add more text since source control tools like git may send the log message as an email and use the first line up to an empty line as the email subject. When committing contributions from non-committers, please attribute the original author in the commit messages.
Since we support many operating systems, it would be best to list which one the commit was tested on to let the community know what has been covered.
TS-#### short summary (72 chars or less), not a sentence Tested: Ubuntu-9.0.4,OSX-10.5,FreeBSD-7.2,OpenSolaris-2009.06 Author: John Doe <john.doe@example.com> More detailed explanatory text as necessary, patch attributions, and what platforms the commit has been tested on. Wrap it to about 72 characters or so. In some contexts, the first line is treated as the subject of an email and the rest of the text as the body. The blank line separating the summary from the body is critical (unless you omit the body entirely); tools like rebase can get confused if you run the two together. This is an example of a second paragraph. The 'Author:' line is required if the commit represents code submitted by somebody who does not have commit permissions. The person doing the commit is implicitly the reviewer of the submitted code. The email address is optional but it is nice to have so the original author can be uniquely identified. It is OK for the committer to modify or cleanup the code and if done so, should be noted in the commit log. |
In the future, I'd like to see the need for listing the operating systems tested on go away when we implement a testing environment that can accept pre-commit patch and verify that patch passes a series of smoke tests.
Commits that resolve a Jira ticket should also include an update to the CHANGES file - just add the full commit 'short summary' line and an attribution if relevant (to make it easier to view version content). Commits to this file should preserve double blank lines where they exist.
Trunk is CTR, Commit-Then-Review, policy. This was discussed and voted on by the community a long time ago. This does grant a lot of freedom to committing experimental or unstable code to the trunk. However, with such powers, comes some responsibilities:
All release branches (e.g. 2.0.x, 3.2.X) should always be kept in a stable and functional state. The commit policy is RTC, Review Then Commit, and backporting changes from trunk should be voted on via the STATUS file on the respective branches.