diff --git a/README.CONTRIBUTING.md b/README.CONTRIBUTING.md index d38bca1da..761451ca4 100644 --- a/README.CONTRIBUTING.md +++ b/README.CONTRIBUTING.md @@ -34,3 +34,33 @@ Signed-off-by: Random J Developer using your real name and the email address (sorry, no pseudonyms or anonymous contributions.) + +## Other information to put into your commit message + +When reviewing a patch, we look for the following information in the commit message: + +- Title: a single line, short and to the point summary of what the patch does. + + - The reason is to be able to do `git log --pretty=oneline` and have a usable result. + +- Intro: observation of the current state + + - Rationale: the problem to be solved is obvious to you, but not to the reviewer. It's good to + have a list of steps to reproduce the problem. + +- Problem description: pros and cons of the current state + + - Rationale: when some feature doesn't work the way expected, frequently there is some other + use-case that motivated the current behavior. It's easier to not break the old use-case with + your change if you're aware of the old use-case. + + - If there was an old use-case and you found it by research, please document it, so the person + reading the commit message finds it easily. + +- Solution: give orders to the codebase + + - A short description of how you introduce new behavior while not breaking old behavior is useful, + because it may not be too obvious just by looking at what you changed. + +An alternative is to have much of this information in a (public) issue, refer to that issue and have +a short commit message. That works better e.g. when using images to demonstrate the problem.