[OE-core] Patch message guidelines and internal/corporate fields

[Richard Purdie]

On Fri, 2014-08-22 at 10:24 -0500, Richard Tollerton wrote:
> Randy MacLeod <randy.macleod at windriver.com> writes:
> 
> > Wind River patches used to include a "CQID" tag but we've changed
> > our process to avoid needing such internal tags. If National
> > Instruments can do so as well, that'd be best.
> >
> > I did check my oe-core email list history and this seems like the
> > first patch from NI that has the tags included so I thought
> > I'd reply and see if we can get the tags dropped.
> 
> IIRC, we pinged Phil a few months ago on this topic, and he thought
> internal tags were OK. I think Wind River might have been cited as an
> example.
> 
> I see that
> http://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Commit_Patch_Message_Guidelines hasn't
> been updated with this requirement. Should it be? Will that require TSC
> approval?

I don't have a strong preference on this to be honest. I can imagine
cases where its useful to have some kind of tracking of issues into the
final commits. 

Obviously it would be better if everyone can understand what the numbers
mean, equally, it seems pointless to force people to strip them when
they might be useful to people contributing to the project.

If they are used as a substitute for a good commit message, that
wouldn't be acceptable. Also, if they were taking over the commit
messages, that would able be unacceptable. So if we can keep them to a
small part of the commit, I'm prepared to let them pass but it can't be
at the expense of good commit messages.

I don't believe we need a TSC decision, that would only be needed if
there were strong disagreements we were unable to resolve and I don't
think we're quite there yet :) I'll let others comment though and see
where we're at.

Cheers,

Richard