== Commit Rules ==

=== General ===

1. Mention the names of the affected ports (or state what they have in common if there are too many to list individually), since this information is not visible in the revision log
1. Be specific about what changes were made (for example, when updating to a new upstream version, mention the version number) and, if it's not completely obvious, why they were made
1. Reference any tickets that are related to the change, preferably with a [wiki:TracLinks Trac link]


=== Using sensible commit messages ===

When committing your changes to MacPorts' central port tree using subversion it is good practice to use properly formatted commit messages.

Think about others reading the [/timeline timeline]. Here you want to see on first glance which port got modified, therefore the recommended format for commit messages is this:
{{{
PORTNAME: COMMENT
}}}
Here a reader of MacPorts' timeline can quickly get the most important information, i.e. ''which'' port got changed and ''why''.

A real-life example is:
{{{
zmq: Fix build on darwin <= 10, closes #40663
}}}
Note that references to [wiki:Tickets Trac tickets] can be inserted using the '#' as well as references to certain commits of the MacPorts repository by using 'r' (e.g. r111866).

If a change affects multiple ports, list all affected ports. If a change affects a large number of ports, listing their names is not necessary.

=== Correcting mistakes ===

If you make a mistake in the commit message, our svn repository is configured so that you can edit it after the fact via
{{{
svn propedit --revprop svn:log -r XXX
}}}
(replacing XXX with the revision number).