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> When does the "next guy" ever look at revision history to see what's going on?

_All the time_. I read all the commits in the codebase I'm responsible for. I need to keep track of what people are doing and how the system is changing. This is also on top of the need for code review and ensuring each patch is correct.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_commit#Atomic_Commit_Con...

I do that all the time with code that I don't understand. The commit message is the last resort of getting a human to talk to you when the comments are missing.

Given one of your other comments here, I get the impression you don't use code review tools much, eg Gerrit. Is that the case?

Not on most projects, no. We are on my current project and the review tool is based on tasks, not commits and can review multiple commits in a single session if they are all related to the same task. Regardless, I am only ever reviewing the end state.

Interesting. What's the rough order of magnitude of the "end state" patch size? 50, 500, 5000 lines?