Writing Log Entries for Merges

Suppose you have used star-merge or some other commands to merge two or more branches. You are ready to commit those changes, but first you have to write a log message.

All of the changes you've just merged are already explained in existing log messages. Your new log message can simply summarize the changes, and point to the more detailed log entries. ArX has commands which help with this.

The command:

% arx new-on-branch [--reverse] [--dir .] VERSION

reports a list of patches found in a project tree, but not previously merged with VERSION. Those patches are the ones that were added by your merging activity.

You can print a summary of the changes made by those patches by using xargs and the log-ls command. For example, the main development path for ArX 1.0 is called ArX--devo--1.0. I develop new features on various branches. When it comes time to write a log message before committing a merge to ArX--devo, I use:

% arx new-on-branch --reverse ArX--devo--1.0 \ | xargs arx log-ls --full --summary

lord@regexps.com--2002/ArX--lord--1.0--patch-14 `merge-points' fixes and `new-on-branch' speed-up lord@regexps.com--2002/ArX--lord--1.0--patch-13 Use --dir consistently. lord@regexps.com--2002/ArX--lord--1.0--patch-12 output format touch-ups

That idiom is captured, along with a little bit of formatting, by the command log-for-merge:

% arx log-for-merge ArX--devo--1.0

Patches applied:

* lord@regexps.com--2002/ArX--lord--1.0--patch-14 `merge-points' fixes and `new-on-branch' speed-up

* lord@regexps.com--2002/ArX--lord--1.0--patch-13 Use --dir consistently.

* lord@regexps.com--2002/ArX--lord--1.0--patch-12 output format touch-ups

(An advantage of using the formate generated by log-for-merge is that it is understood by other ArX commands which automatically format web pages from ChangeLogs.)