Re: need help learning Ada for a modula-2 programmer

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Georg Bauhaus <rm-host.bauhaus@maps.arcor.de> writes:

> "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
>> "Dirk Heinrichs" <dirk.heinrichs@altum.de> wrote in message 
>
>>> 
>>> You should avoid putting the revision history _into_ your
>>> files. It's the job of your version control system to handle
>>> this. Putting it into the file increases the probability of getting
>>> merge conflicts.
>> 
>> I strongly disagree with this advice. The time to write revision
>> history entries is when you are either about to write the code or
>> just finished doing so (and more rarely, in the middle). That's when
>> all of the important issues are fresh in your mind. It's definitely
>> not at check-in time, which occurs after all testing is completed.
>
> Depending on the VC system, and on the note taking features of the
> IDE, the two approaches can be combined. One branch is for frequent
> commits of things just finished, and another branch is for whole
> change sets (after testing). The description of the whole change sets
> can then draw upon notes that were written earlier, when adding to the
> frequent commits branch.

I don't use git, but AIUI 'rebasing' supports frequent commits with the
ability to elide them later so you only see the overall effect. What
happens to the change log I don't know.

Mercurial has queues[1] which allow you to build up a patch over time,
updating the overall commit message as you go.

Personally I don't find it hard to remember what the changes were over a
reasonably short period, but then it's easy to do one thing at a time on
personal projects. Of course, that's not the same as remembering what
the changes were _for_, but I'm not sure that the RCS is the right place
for that anyway?

[1] http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MqTutorial