Having done CM for years (I ran a company called "Configuration 
Management Services, Inc.) I have to add that I'd much rather see 
something like "The follow PRs were closed by this update..." followed
by a list of the numbers and a short explanation of how.

A CVS update like "Fixed a bunch of broken stuff" is insufficient.  
A rambling, chatty-cathy description of every line of changed code is 
too much.  There has got to be a happy summary limit in there someplace.

Dave

Alistair Crooks wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:49:47PM -0400, Todd Vierling wrote:
> > This practice of committing with changelogs has got to stop.  People have
> > asked why I think it's a stupid idea and have "suggested" that I do so in my
> > commits, and I'm continuing to refuse to do so.  Attached you'll find a
> > perfect counterexample that shows how unreasonable this policy is.
> 
> Au contraire, the practice of committing a SUMMARY of the changes
> to the previous version stays in place.
> 
> You would be far better asking the person who comitted the large
> summary very kindly, in private mail, to be a bit more succinct.
> 
> Whilst I agree that 40K is a tad verbose as a precis, people who do
> not add a SUMMARY of the changes will be kindly asked to modify the
> commit message after the fact.
> 
> Thanks for your cooperation,
> Alistair
> 
> > All this does is add a lot more clutter to CVS files, and has very little
> > advantage otherwise.  Remember that if you commit with a big commit message,
> > *every* file touched with that commit grows by that amount in the CVS
> > repository.
> >
> > Leave documentation files to provide documentation.  That's not what CVS
> > commit logs are meant to hold.  If you want more descriptive change log
> > entries, how about a short manually written note that describes why a
> > package is added or upgraded?  (And yes, "many bug fixes" should be
> > sufficient.)
> >
> > : Module Name:        doc
> > : Committed By:       nra
> > : Date:               Tue Jul 10 17:53:18 UTC 2001
> > :
> > : Modified Files:
> > :     doc: pkg-CHANGES
> > :
> > : Log Message:
> > : Note update of xpmroot to version 2.4.0.  PR #13374 by Martti Kuparinen.
> > :
> >   [*40K* of change log entries]
> >
> > --
> > -- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  Wasabi NetBSD:  Run with it.
> > -- NetBSD 1.5 now available on CD-ROM  --  http://www.wasabisystems.com/