Re: Feature request: Auto-logging of merges

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 kfogel@collab.net wrote:

> Well, you can add the merge command to the log message yourself
> (that's what I usually do).
>
> It's not good for us to go making ad-hoc standards, in the hopes that
> they won't get in our way too much in the future, or not be obsoleted
> by a more complete solution. A moment of convenience, a lifetime of
> regret...
>
> If you really try to flesh out your feature suggestion, "add an
> annotation to the working copy that receives the merge, giving the two
> source URLs and revision numbers; this annotation would be
> automatically added to the log message at the next commit", you'll
> quickly run into all sorts of complexities and problems. Now we'd be
> committing a log message that's different from what the user writes
> themselves. I'm sure you can see the possibilities for lossage here.

I had proposed a similar idea on #svn a few weeks back for the same reason
-- interim merge tracking. I was thinking more along the lines of setting
properties on the WC which would be attached to the commit in the form of
revision properties. I believe at the time one of the core developers
(ghudson?) said he didn't have any issues with the idea, so I'm surprised
to see an argument for what I see as a very similar feature.

I'm not sure I understand what complexities, problems, or lossage would
arise. Log messages are intended to describe a commit, appending further
information as to the source of the changes seems like a good idea.

I think this sort of feature would be very useful for those of us trying
to implement workflow things on top of SVN. Here's an example. Since
switching to SVN at the beginning of May, we've been using
one-branch-per-task with great success (yay cheap branching!). We have a
convienence command that merges a task branch into your current working
copy. It works something like the following:

---
$ taskmerge 1234
Merging task 1234 into working copy...
After resolving conflicts, use the following command to commit the merge:
svn commit -m 'taskmerge 1234: r12345:12412'
U somefile
U somefile2
U somefile3
---
I need to note in the log message that this is 'taskmerge', so I can
generate a report on these to discover what tasks have been merged into a
branch.  The script suggests a recommended commit message, but already I
have developers ignoring/forgetting it, which screw up my integration
reports and cause me to go fix their log messages.  Better would be to let
SVN do it -- taskmerge sets some kind of property/log message on the WC
which gets attached to the commit.
Bill
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