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Git grumpy: Torvalds complains of passive voice in merge commit messages (www.neowin.net)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Linus Torvalds expressed frustration over the use of passive voice in merge commit messages, preferring active and imperative language instead.

He provided an example of how commit messages should be rewritten for clarity and consistency across the project.

Torvalds noted that while it's not a major issue, it does add extra work when he has to rewrite messages to match his preference.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Linus Torvalds: creator of Linux and Git, and hero to all English teachers everywhere!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So, uh, I have a colleague who studied linguistics, and when I explained to her that we write commit messages like that, her reaction was basically: What the fuck, why?

My explanation wasn't as sharp, as I didn't call it "imperative" but rather just "infinitive", which got me the immediate backlash that it's not a sentence then, so why do you put a dot behind it?

She did accept my ~~descriptivist excuses~~ explanation that we write it that way, because it's terser, but I know it didn't sit well with her.
Will need to see what her reaction is to commanding the repo. 😅

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

you put a dot after commit msg?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Yup. Commit messages are often shown in truncated form, which is when the dot helps to know whether you're seeing the whole message or not.

Well, and every so often, I'll use the commit message to document why a change was made, which requires multiple sentences. Then the dot just serves its usual purpose of separating sentences.