[Bioc-devel] All Package Maintainers Please README!

[James W. MacDonald]

Marc Carlson wrote:
> You have a point Jim, but I think that we also have to consider how this
> blog will change what we put into our commit messages.  Prior to this, I
> have primarily used the 1st line as a "title" and then followed up with
> a more detailed description.  But the existence of this blog means that
> I will lean towards putting more information in the 1st section (rather
> than just a title), and just shift any private information into the
> second part.
> 
> I am really just suggesting that a standardized format separated by a
> clean line break would be the least amount of typing by everyone
> involved.  I like this because at least at the fhcrc we are already
> using this format, so it's very similar and the format seems to work
> pretty well.

Yes, there are two of you at the Hutch who do this (now that Seth is 
gone), and I think you both do a wonderful job of describing your commits.

However, none of the other developers do this, so your argument boils 
down to expecting all of the other developers to take up this paradigm 
rather than asking you to add a _single_ # to the beginning of a 
paragraph in your commit message that you don't want published.

If BioC had a BDFL maybe he or she could decree such a thing, but as 
things stand I highly doubt we could coerce all the developers to follow 
your paradigm.

Best,

Jim


> 
> This won't change the fact that most people will still just type one
> cryptic line for most commits.  But at least those of use who want to
> put more personal data in there (purely for the sake of our personal
> recollection) will not be penalized by having to type lots of comment
> characters.
> 
> Of course, I would also like to still have a title for my commits, so
> perhaps we should really have 3 sections?  A title, a public
> description, and then a private section which could all be separated by
> two line breaks?
> 
>     Marc

-- 
James W. MacDonald, M.S.
Biostatistician
Affymetrix and cDNA Microarray Core
University of Michigan Cancer Center
1500 E. Medical Center Drive
7410 CCGC
Ann Arbor MI 48109
734-647-5623