Closing the Loop - Version Control and Issue Tracker Integration

May 15, 2009


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If you are a developer on an open source project hosted on Google Code, and you are committing a change that fixes a known defect or adds a requested enhancement, you will want to update the associated issue. You could do that by first committing the change, and then using the web UI to update the issue. But, now there is a more convenient way to close the loop: you can update an issue by putting an issue tracker command in your commit-log message.

There are commit-log commands to:
  • Easily set an issue's status to Fixed.
  • Update any aspect of the issue, and add a comment.
  • Enter a new issue.
  • Request a code review.
The most common case is to close the issue as Fixed. For example, your commit-log message might be:


Now, your commit links to the issues, the issues are closed, and a back-link is added from each issue to the revision.

Updating an issue, without closing it, can be useful when a commit partially resolves the issue. And, opening a new issue is useful when you know that follow-up work will be needed. For more information and examples, see our issue tracker documentation.