git tools such as git log and git show indent the commit message in their output, so you don't actually have the full 79/80 character width to work with. That's where the 72 comes from.
Doug Excerpts from Vikram Choudhary's message of 2015-09-25 20:25:41 +0530: > +1 for <=80 chars. It will be uniform with the existing coding style. > > On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Dmitry Tantsur <dtant...@redhat.com> wrote: > > > On 09/25/2015 04:44 PM, Ihar Hrachyshka wrote: > > > >> Hi all, > >> > >> releases are approaching, so it’s the right time to start some bike > >> shedding on the mailing list. > >> > >> Recently I got pointed out several times [1][2] that I violate our commit > >> message requirement [3] for the message lines that says: "Subsequent lines > >> should be wrapped at 72 characters.” > >> > >> I agree that very long commit message lines can be bad, f.e. if they are > >> 200+ chars. But <= 79 chars?.. Don’t think so. Especially since we have 79 > >> chars limit for the code. > >> > >> We had a check for the line lengths in openstack-dev/hacking before but > >> it was killed [4] as per openstack-dev@ discussion [5]. > >> > >> I believe commit message lines of <=80 chars are absolutely fine and > >> should not get -1 treatment. I propose to raise the limit for the guideline > >> on wiki accordingly. > >> > > > > +1, I never understood it actually. I know some folks even question 80 > > chars for the code, so having 72 chars for commit messages looks a bit > > weird to me. > > > > > >> Comments? > >> > >> [1]: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/224728/6//COMMIT_MSG > >> [2]: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/227319/2//COMMIT_MSG > >> [3]: > >> https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GitCommitMessages#Summary_of_Git_commit_message_structure > >> [4]: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/142585/ > >> [5]: > >> http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2014-December/thread.html#52519 > >> > >> Ihar > >> > >> > >> > >> __________________________________________________________________________ > >> OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > >> Unsubscribe: > >> openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > >> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev > >> > >> > > > > __________________________________________________________________________ > > OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > > Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev > > __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
