Commit comments - call for opinions

[Simon Peyton Jones]

|  GitLab does things slightly differently. It has "live" git repository
|  information available, and rather than the relatively static comment list
|  we see in Trac, it synthesizes a "timeline" style list of events relevant
|  to an issue, which includes comments ("notes"), but also issue status
|  updates, git commits, and other things.

Can you show an example of such a time-line? Where is it displayed?  The "Discussion" tab perhaps?

Personally I like what we are doing now, with the commit message inline. Clicking links to see useful information gets in the way.  (I'm not sure if even the title/author/date of the commit are displayed.)

|  a) Import commit comments as notes, duplicating the commit message into
|  the note, and having both the full commit note and a hyperlinked commit
|  reference in the issue timeline.

I'm in favour of this.  It just preserves history and doesn't commit us for the future.

One more question: currently the commit appears as a comment in every Trac ticket that is mentioned in the text of the commit message.  That's _really_ useful, because it signals (in those related tickets) that there's a relevant commit to watch out for.  Will it continue to be the case?

Simon

|  -----Original Message-----
|  From: ghc-devs <ghc-devs-bounces at haskell.org> On Behalf Of Tobias Dammers
|  Sent: 07 February 2019 08:48
|  To: GHC Devs <ghc-devs at haskell.org>
|  Subject: Commit comments - call for opinions
|  
|  Dear all,
|  
|  So far, we had a feature in Trac where git commit messages mentioning a
|  ticket would automatically be copied into a comment on that commit. See,
|  for example, this comment:
|  
|  https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fghc.has
|  kell.org%2Ftrac%2Fghc%2Fticket%2F13615%23comment%3A47&data=02%7C01%7C
|  simonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4e4e4de2a28141c38bfd08d68cd9015b%7C72f988bf86f1
|  41af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636851260994463920&sdata=JpLtBith2iW2N
|  fbYdZOt7dsjhKm1Ram7QCgR7aeiVUs%3D&reserved=0
|  
|  GitLab does things slightly differently. It has "live" git repository
|  information available, and rather than the relatively static comment list
|  we see in Trac, it synthesizes a "timeline" style list of events relevant
|  to an issue, which includes comments ("notes"), but also issue status
|  updates, git commits, and other things. So when a commit mentions a
|  GitLab issue, then GitLab will insert a link to that commit into the
|  issue's event timeline.
|  
|  This means that in principle, copying commit messages into notes would be
|  redundant, and we initially decided to ignore commit comments during the
|  Trac/GitLab migration. However, it also means that the issue timeline
|  will no longer display the actual commit message anymore, just a link to
|  the commit ("@username mentioned this issue in commit 1234beef" or
|  similar). So what used to be a narrative that you could read top-down to
|  retrace the issue's history is now a bit more scattered.
|  
|  Now, the ideal solution would be for GitLab to instead display the full
|  commit message, but I don't see this happening anytime soon, because it
|  would require a patch to GitLab itself. So we're left with two options:
|  
|  a) Import commit comments as notes, duplicating the commit message into
|  the note, and having both the full commit note and a hyperlinked commit
|  reference in the issue timeline.
|  
|  b) Don't import commit comments as notes, just rely on GitLab to insert
|  the hyperlinked commit reference.
|  
|  If any of you have any preference either way, please do tell.
|  
|  Thanks!
|  
|  --
|  Tobias Dammers - tdammers at gmail.com
|  _______________________________________________
|  ghc-devs mailing list
|  ghc-devs at haskell.org
|  https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.has
|  kell.org%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fghc-
|  devs&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4e4e4de2a28141c38bfd08d
|  68cd9015b%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636851260994473914
|  &sdata=sybIa7Fec76lod2d65Wc2IN187WGG3LjI2ydjpsFJF0%3D&reserved=0