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by Sir_Substance
2623 days ago
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>Oh and while it doesn't "live" with the code, I can at least look up a line in question and see which commits have changed it, along with their commit messages. The first job I had, I was working on software that had originally been developed by a software engineer but had then been passed to the stewardship of non-programmers. Originally, it had been checked into CVS (yeah, it was that old), but the non-programmers didn't know what that was or how to use it, so when they started making experimental edits, they just copied the source folder to a new location and labelled it "NEW <project>". By the time I got involved there were over 200 of these folders on the network drive, it was unclear which one if any represented the head revision, and the machine with CVS on it had long ago been lost and existed only as a legend. This wasn't insignificant software by the way. I don't feel like telling you exactly what it was, but it was an intense physics simulation and it has quietly impacted probably around a million lives over the last few decades. The point is, don't assume your commit messages are as permanent as your code, they're not. Non-developers just barely grasp source code being important but they don't understand VCS history /at all/. Put important comments in your code. |
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Fortunately, DVCSs don't have that problem because the meta-information is stored in a folder within the source. So unless the non-developer deletes that folder in every single project, then the information won't be lost (but it wouldn't get updated either).