Reg: force commit option in Hg

[TK Soh]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 8:18 PM, Mark A. Flacy <mflacy at verizon.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-08-25 at 18:55 +0800, TK Soh wrote:
>
>> While I agree in principle that the history should be immutable, I do
>> hope there's a way to update the commit message without really
>> altering the history.
>
> The commit message is considered to be part of the history, so changing
> the commit message *is* altering the history.

A way to 'append' the commit messages, i.e. add a new ones without
deleting the old ones, might serve as a reasonable compromise. I view
it as vaguely similar to how Mercurial handles the tags: we can change
the tags, but the history is there to make sure we can trace back to
the original tag position.

>>
>> Over the years, I've observed that mistakes in commit messages seem
>> relatively common, especially for users new to committing changes or
>> when large amount of changes are involved. Often time, it's too late
>> for changes when the mistakes are discovered.
>
> Well, that's one reason for code reviews.

It doesn't always work, at least not straightforward, especially when
you have a lot of people adding changes to the repo during active
development cycle.