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A comment on Commit messages guide. Parent comment

Re:Commit messages guide by thaumasiotes on Saturday April 20, 2019 @05:31AM (#19705592)
> A sentence must have a subject and a predicate, and a verb in the inf[in]itive form can't be a predicate

In the well-formed sentence

    For cyanide to kill you, you need to be exposed to a lethal dose all at once.
What do you think "to kill you" is?

Furthermore, idiomatic commit messages are pretty clearly not sentences, so I don't see why you think sentence structure should determine what they contain. And even on your own analysis of how the messages are interpreted (which I agree with), those verbs are infinitive, just as "fix" is infinitive in this dialog:

    Q: What is this patch supposed to do?
    A: Fix issue #351916.
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Re:Commit messages guide by fphilipe on Saturday April 20, 2019 @05:50AM (#19705642)
> What do you think "to kill you" is?

Infinitive. The predicate is "need" in this case. Swapping the order might make it clearer:

    You need to be exposed to a lethal dose all at once for cyanide to kill you.
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Re:Commit messages guide by thaumasiotes on Saturday April 20, 2019 @02:01PM (#19707900)
"For cyanide to kill you" is constructed from the sentence "cyanide kills you", and obeys exactly the same rules. It predicates an action (killing) of a particular agent (cyanide), though it is not bound to any particular time. If "kills you" is a "predicate" in the finite clause, then "to kill you" is also a predicate in the nonfinite clause. Can you make the argument that it isn't without special pleading?
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