Improve commit messages for upgrade notes

[andrewnicols]

Improve commit messages for upgrade notes

[iluuu1994]

I think the reason some people don't include the release notes in the commit itself is because our merge strategy discards changes from the NEWS file when merging upwards (see https://wiki.php.net/vcs/gitworkflow#initial_setup). I usually merge with git merge PHP-8.x --no-commit, copy the change for NEWS, and then commit the merge. But we don't have any guidelines for this.

Is there any other reason I'm missing? I think the suggestion makes sense, if the NEWS entry is included in the change commit itself, then it's much easier to further investigate the change through git blame and then git show.

/cc @nielsdos @SakiTakamachi @arnaud-lb @Girgias

[nielsdos]

I do it separately when it's a series of changes to the code that will make up a single note. For most changes I include the NEWS or UPGRADING note in the commit itself (when it's a single commit).
I never realized this could be a problem because you need to read the content of the file itself to know what the details are anyway.
But I'll make a note to write at least a short title for future notes.

[Girgias]

I usually try to commit the UPGRADING/NEWS changes with the relevant commit too.
However, usually such UPGRADING commits immediately follow the relevant commits, so I don't "really" see an issue here.

[SakiTakamachi]

Since this is not a code change, I didn't give it much thought. I don't think this is actually a problem, but from now on I'll include a brief description of what I updated.

[iluuu1994]

Ok. Let's leave it at that for now. We should try to include the message in the change itself if it consists of a single commit. If there are multiple, adding a better description and/or adding the commit hashes could help (note that this only works if the commits aren't rebased). Thanks for your inputs!