[openstack-dev] [all] -1 due to line length violation in commit messages

Jeremy Stanley fungi at yuggoth.org
Fri Sep 25 15:42:15 UTC 2015


On 2015-09-25 16:44:59 +0200 (+0200), Ihar Hrachyshka wrote:
[...]
> I believe commit message lines of <=80 chars are absolutely fine
> and should not get -1 treatment. I propose to raise the limit for
> the guideline on wiki accordingly.
[...]

As one of those traditionalists who still does all his work in 80x24
terminals (well, 80x25 with a status line), I keep my commit message
titles at or under 50 characters and message contents to no more
than 68 characters to allow for cleaner indentation/quoting just
like for my MUA editor settings. After all, some (non-OpenStack)
projects take patch submissions by E-mail and so it's easier to just
follow conservative E-mail line length conventions when possible.

That said, while I appreciate when people keep their commit message
lines wrapped short enough that they render sanely on my terminal, I
make a point of not leaving negative reviews about commit message
formatting unless it's really egregious (and usually not even then).
We have plenty of real bugs to deal with, and it's not worth my time
to berate people for inconsistent commit message layout as long as
the requisite information is present--it's easier to just lead by
example and hope that others follow most of the time.

As for the underlying topic, people leaving -1 reviews about silly,
unimportant details: reviewers need to get used to the fact that
sometimes there will be a -1 on a perfectly good proposed change, so
it's fine to ignore negative votes from people who are wasting their
time on pointless trivia. Please don't set your review filters to
skip changes with a CR -1 on them; review and judge for yourself.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley



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