Re: Commit subject line

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> On 2013-05-03 14:54:23 -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>>
>> On 05/03/2013 02:43 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> >Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnakangas(at)vmware(dot)com> writes:
>> >>On 03.05.2013 20:56, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> >>>On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 01:42:33PM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>> >>>>Yeah. The recommended style is to have the first line be 50 chars or
>> >>>>less, which is a bit unfortunate - it can be a challenge to keep to
>> >>>>that limit for a meaningful or comprehensive subject.
>> >>Oh, that's tight. I didn't know about the 50 char recommendation. I've
>> >>tried to keep mine < 76 chars, so that when you do "git log", it fits on
>> >>a 80 char display with the 4 char indentation that git log does.
>> >Yeah, that's news to me too. I've been using a 75-char line length for
>> >all my commit messages since we switched to git. It's frequently tough
>> >enough to get a useful headline into 75 chars --- I can't see trying to
>> >do 50.
>>
>> man git-commit says:
>>
>> Though not required, it’s a good idea to begin the commit message
>> with a single short (less than 50 character) line summarizing the
>> change, followed by a blank line and then a more thorough
>> description. Tools that turn commits into email, for example, use
>> the first line on the Subject: line and the rest of the commit in
>> the body.
>>
>> I'd be happy to use 75 or whatever if we could convince the email tools not
>> to truncate the subject lines at 50.
>
> Its worth to notice that neither git nor the kernel adhere to that
> limit...

FWIW, the tool we use to generate the commit emails truncate it at 80
(minus the "pgsql: " header). We can increase that, but it only fixes
the email one, and not the one that people look at on the web...

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/