Is reference to bug/issue in commit message considered good practice?

Posted by Christian P on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Christian P
Published on 2011-11-24T20:33:43Z Indexed on 2011/11/25 2:17 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 331

Filed under:

version-control

|

programming-practices

|

pragmatism

|

commit-log

I'm working on a project where we have the source control set up to automatically write notes in the bug tracker. We simply write the bug issue ID in the commit message and the commit message is added as a note to the bug tracker.

I can see only a few downsides for this practice. If sometime in the future the source code gets separated from the bug tracking software (or the reported bugs/issues are somehow lost). Or when someone is looking in the history of commits but doesn't have access to our bug tracker.

My question is if having a bug/issue reference in the commit message is considered good practice? Are there some other downsides?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about version-control

In the context of the TFS version control SDK (Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl), what exactl

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
In the context of the TFS version control SDK (Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl), what exactly is deletionID? It is a property of Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.Item. It is also a parameter to some of the query methods on Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client. I'm… >>> More
What are the advantages of version control systems that version each file separately?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Over the past few years I have worked with several different version control systems. For me, one of the fundamental differences between them has been whether they version files individually (each file has its own separate version numbering and history) or the repository as a whole (a "commit" or… >>> More
What are the advantages of version control systems that version each file separately?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Over the past few years I have worked with several different version control systems. For me, one of the fundamental differences between them has been whether they version files individually (each file has its own separate version numbering and history) or the repository as a whole (a "commit" or… >>> More
R and version control for the solo data analyst

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Many data analysts that I respect use version control. For example: http://github.com/hadley/ See comments on http://permut.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/revision-control-statistics-bleg/ However, I'm evaluating whether adopting a version control system such as git would be worthwhile. A brief overview: I'm… >>> More
What version control tool can generate this header

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
This is from a sql script. What tool can generate this? Thanks --USE [MY_TABLE] GO /****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[adminIncExp] Script Date: 03/05/2010 09:14:12 ******/ SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO -- ============================================= -- Author: … >>> More

Related posts about programming-practices

programming practices starting

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have taken my major as computer science and Engineering and I am really confused at this moment. My first course was about learning C and C++ and I learned the basics of those. Now I am really confused what to do next. Some says I should practice algorithms and do contests in ACM-ICPC for now… >>> More
Are `break` and `continue` bad programming practices?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
My boss keeps mentioning nonchalantly that bad programmers use break and continue in loops. I use them all the time because they make sense; let me show you the inspiration: function verify(object) { if (object->value < 0) return false; if (object->value > object->max_value)… >>> More
Why is C++ backward compatibility important / necessary?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
As far as understand it is a well-established opinion within the C++ community that C is an obsolete language that was useful 20 years ago but cannot support many modern good programming practices, or even encourages bad practices; certain features that were typical of C++ (C with classes) during… >>> More
Any task-control algorithms programming practices?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I was just wondering if there's any field which concerns the task-control programming (or at least that's the way I call it). For a better explanation of task-control consider the following scenario: An application (master-thread) waits for a command - which might be a particular action or… >>> More
displaying python's autodoc to the user (python 3.3)

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm writing a simple command line math game, and I'm using python's autodoc for my math algorithms to help me remember, for example, what a proth number is while i'm writing the algorithm, but later on I'll want to tell that information to the user as well, so they'll know what the answer was. So… >>> More