As someone who has spent a lot of time tracking down the origin of source code changes -- and the reasons for them, and the implications of the change -- by reviewing commit logs, I can think of little worse, short of no commit history at all, than trying to derive anything remotely useful from a commit history that has been condensed down to a product change log.
Even commits that lack good commit messages provide valuable information in the form of insight into the author's cumulative thinking/process.
Ugh, the thought of scouring through commits with messages like "fixed", "oops", "done" is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
What I read is a LACK of thought process, when you can't squash and justify your changes susinctly
Even commits that lack good commit messages provide valuable information in the form of insight into the author's cumulative thinking/process.