I don''t think they''re that bad at all really. As long as the code does what it''s supposed to ;)

Though there''s one I''ve found that cracks me up -

"# Shamelessly pulled from goals.cgi. Sure we could move it into a lib somewhere for easier access but that would be akin
# to trying to make frankenstein''s monster into a prom queen by slapping a little foundation on him and ignoring the rest"

I''ve read much worse in commit logs. I love seeing some humor in the logs as long as it lets me know if anything important has changed too!

My favorite check-in comment was from a student intern, "None of this code works, but Friday is my last day, and none of you ever bother to look at my stuff anyway." He was right :-)

Hey, they''re messages to one''s fellow developers, answering the question "why?" They sound entirely in line with project goals ;-)

@Joshua Lay, @Greg Wilson -- Nice ones! Keep ''em coming everyone.

And, to answer my own rhetorical question, I don''t think it is out of line. Then again, I don''t really have a dev lead...

You''re messages are nice, and mostly informative too.
Once as a lead developer my fellow asked me to see a comment. He couldn''t believing that coment was really serious:
"I don''t know what the ''room'' tag means in this XML.Sent Email to XXX and YYY none answered, so I assume it will be always = 1" - unfortunatelly for us, it was real :(

At one of my previous employers, someone named a variable with the name of a US president and in the checkin comment for that fixed clearly called out that it''s a dummy variable passed as some SDK api now needs it.

Perhaps this list of commit messages should be added to http://whatthecommit.com/.

@Ricky -- Nice! After a few refreshes, here''s some of my fav from that site:

"pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

"This is the last time we let Sarah commit ascii porn in the comments."

"I must have been drunk."

"This is why the cat shouldn''t sit on my keyboard."

what about "Fix for the endless issue" ?

I know several dev''s that don''t use check in comments. they just hit the space bar so that its not null, and then check it in.

I''d rather read humorous comments than none at all.

I think using humor in code check-ins (or comments) is great, so long as they are informative. Even if they aren''t informative, it''s preferable to nothing. I think it actually makes reading the comments much more enjoyable and, consequently, more likely to be read at all.

Case in point, one of the more classic instances of adding humor to what would otherwise be a soulless litany of status updates are the humorous flight squawks which I''m sure thousands of people have read: http://margaret.healthblogs.org/2010/02/22/squawk/

I''m certainly guilty of writing borderline appropriate check-in comments, but I do try to make sure they still get the point across. But perhaps that''s more acceptable where I work. After all, our CTO has a sticker on the door to his office reading "The beatings will continue until moral improves!"

"Trying to fix a bug..."

"NA" (with ~50 files updated)

[...] read this post today with a list of funny checkin comments today. Some of them are funny simply because of the lacking description. Here are some comments [...]

#10 is a classic: "Fixed dirty logic"

This tells you how much developers hate and don't trust each other's work.

As usual this was a thoughtful submit today. You make me want to preserve coming back and forwarding it my followers?-.

I found your blog site on google and check several of the early posts. Continue to keep up the good work. I just added up your RSS feed to my MSN News Reader. Looking forward to reading through far more from you later on!