Meta: Include consequences of bugfixes in PR/commit messages

[gdevenyi]

While my ability to develop code for ZFS is limited, I try to keep abreast of the happenings by reading the PRs/commits, and I've found this common difficulty.

Take for example: 9e0b42e (#13015)

This PR/commit message tells me on a technical level what the bug was, and how it was fixed, but it doesnt tell me

• how this bug could be triggered
• what the consequences of the bug are (crash? Data loss? inability to import pool?)

I'd like to request a new checkbox be added for the PR/commit process that provide's a user-level interpretation of what changes are wherever possible. This results in a sort of self-documenting history of reasons/motivations which can be lost otherwise, and enables the eventual autogenerated changelog to be more useful when a release is generated.

Thanks for your consideration.

[gdevenyi]

A follow-up of an additional request, document as well

• when a bug is fixed indicate which releases the bug affected

[gdevenyi]

https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-2.1.6 does not track user-visible bugfixes in the way requested.

[tonyhutter]

'I'd like to request a new checkbox be added for the PR/commit process that provide's a user-level interpretation of what changes are wherever possible.

Yes, reviewers should be reviewing the commit message to make sure they're clear. Often all that's needed is the addition of a simple "here's what it does" line if there existing message is technical (example #13797 (comment)).

when a bug is fixed indicate which releases the bug affected

You should be able to look this up from the release notes. Each commit in the release notes has a link back to the issue it fixes (assuming it had a #Closes line in the commit message).