present tense in commit messages

[Brendan Cully]

On Tuesday, 29 December 2009 at 01:20, TK Soh wrote:
> To follow what seemed to be the common practice, I have asked the
> developers in my team to write the commit messages in present tense,
> even though I never quite understand the reasoning behind it. Recently
> one of them noticed the the auto-generated commit messages by 'hg tag'
> say 'Added tag..." - in past tense.
> 
> Appreciate if anyone can help clarify these, both on the use of
> present tense, and the inconsistency in 'hg tag'. Thanks.

I think it's in the present tense because the commit entry answers the
question "what does this commit do?" -- I'd say the tense is more like
the Spanish "soy" than "estoy" perhaps.