A long time ago, the Clippy kingdom was suffering from the darkest of epidemics; our changelog wasn’t formatted as it should. In an ocean of tears, a hero arose, a not so important issue with the name of #10847

It brought great joy to the kingdom, as now the 3-4 people interested in the Changelog could categorize the relevant issues at their discretion.

And with that joy, once the dust settled, a years-old tradition would be born. The Clippy Changelog Cat Contest (CCCC). Today, I’ll tell you the history behind the tradition.

The beginning

First, some context.
In Clippy (Rust’s linter), for as long as I can remember, our changelog pull requests were… special. The team member that took great care of writing them also liked to include a poem in each one. Fred’s poems are a tradition that still goes on to this day, even through multiple changelog-writers.

After a meeting, we decided that maybe it was time to update how the changelog was written, nothing fancy. Based on that meeting, the forementioned issue was created.

In that issue I may have made my greatest comment to date, and I’m the reason for this post. So when I say that a comment was great, you better know I mean it

nothing has convinced me that rust-clippy is in fabulous shape more than seeing “meow meow” in the review comment for a clippy pr

— jyn514, on Mastodon

The comment in question is “Should a cat video be assigned with each release? It would be an absolute win, imo.”

As you can see, originally it was a little cat video. This was later refactored into a user-submitted cat photo and the name of their cat with a little (fun) description.

We had to do some adjustments to the timing, how much time for submissions was given, when did the contest start and how the vote was executed. Something funny that happened is that, when everything was just starting (for like the first 2 editions) only 3 team members were submitting cats. Until we thought “What if we posted the pull request on Reddit?” and then people went crazy!

The community really liked the contest, with 49 different interactions, many of them being cat pictures! For the first few editions we didn’t know how to pick the “best cat”, so we just decided for a different criteria each time (the funniest, the prettiest, the best-shot…) but with each following contests it was clear that the public had to have a voice in this vote. So we decided to post a link with a form for each person to vote (in fact, sharing with their friends/family is encouraged)

After a few editions the contest spread, from only Github into Reddit, Mastodon and Rust’s discord. We’re not sure how many people see it, but the voting numbers (70-120 answers on each poll) indicate that the community likes it.

The test of time

The Clippy Changelog Cat Contest started with Rust 1.72, but it didn’t stop there. From Rust 1.72 until today (800 days later, 19 releases later, 3 team members that left and 5 that joined later) it’s going strong, with a great rebirth after a period of silence.

I think that this kind of activity really reminds us that free and open source communities are more fun than they might appear. I’m not sure if the community really knows that the event is still going on and strong, we’re still judging cat pictures in each Rust release, but I think that it gives Clippy that fun, whimsy essence that every project needs every so often.

If you have a cat, don’t hesitate to post a picture of that little rascal in the 19th edition of the CCCC. Have a great day and achieve excellence today, as always.

❤️