From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
To: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
Ext4 Developers List <linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] ext4 updates for 5.5
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2019 11:09:58 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAHk-=whqR7T_UuKX0JvOFK48RdiViOTPkNxxfjwh70FxjoxE0Q@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20191126125304.GA20746@mit.edu>
On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 4:53 AM Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> * Direct I/O via iomap (required the iomap-for-next branch from Darrick
> as a prereq).
I appreciate you telling me this, but why didn't you say anything at
all in the merge?
Ted, this merge commit message is simply not acceptable:
Merge branch 'iomap-for-next' into mb/dio
That's literally all you wrote about the iomap merge.
Not ok.
Merges are commits too. And merges need commit messages too. They need
an explanation of what they do - and why - the same way a normal
commit does.
You wouldn't make a one-liner "Do this" message for a regular commit
that has big implications. Why do you think it's ok for a merge
commit?
When you merge something, the individual commits that get pulled in
hopefully have their own explanations for each individual change -
otherwise you definitely shouldn't merge them. So the merge doesn't
need to replicate all of that.
But the merge itself still needs a "why am I merging these commits" explanation.
We pride ourselves on good commit messages. But that merge commit
message is pure and utter garbage.
Linus
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-11-30 19:10 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-11-26 12:53 [GIT PULL] ext4 updates for 5.5 Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-11-30 19:09 ` Linus Torvalds [this message]
2019-12-01 1:16 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-11-30 19:40 ` pr-tracker-bot
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