From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Paul Eggert Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Should we restore manually maintained ChangeLogs Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 11:26:19 -0800 Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Message-ID: <56E078DB.1020809@cs.ucla.edu> References: <56BE7E37.3090708@cs.ucla.edu> <4hd1rw1ubr.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <83vb50wxhv.fsf@gnu.org> <87y49vz4cg.fsf@acer.localhost.com> <87vb4zb0i4.fsf@gnu.org> <837fheuu6a.fsf@gnu.org> <83twkiteb3.fsf@gnu.org> <83lh5utbxb.fsf@gnu.org> <56DDD02A.20809@cs.ucla.edu> <83fuw2t2ue.fsf@gnu.org> <56DE0F6A.6010207@cs.ucla.edu> <83pov5rmt6.fsf@gnu.org> <56DFD78F.40205@cs.ucla.edu> <56E06093.7050509@cs.ucla.edu> <83twkfo7ij.fsf@gnu.org> <56E071AB.8050008@cs.ucla.edu> <83io0vo43x.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1457551608 9888 80.91.229.3 (9 Mar 2016 19:26:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 19:26:48 +0000 (UTC) Cc: monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Mar 09 20:26:33 2016 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1adjkd-0003GR-Hp for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2016 20:26:31 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:43666 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adjkc-0005Ti-Sb for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2016 14:26:30 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:45983) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adjkY-0005SU-6V for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2016 14:26:27 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adjkX-0008Em-Du for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 09 Mar 2016 14:26:26 -0500 Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([131.179.128.68]:48744) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adjkS-0008DZ-Nt; Wed, 09 Mar 2016 14:26:20 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 176CD160E8D; Wed, 9 Mar 2016 11:26:20 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10032) with ESMTP id RQcHmas4P0Ln; Wed, 9 Mar 2016 11:26:19 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C916160F68; Wed, 9 Mar 2016 11:26:19 -0800 (PST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at zimbra.cs.ucla.edu Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10026) with ESMTP id ks5SN1swSTcU; Wed, 9 Mar 2016 11:26:19 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from penguin.cs.ucla.edu (Penguin.CS.UCLA.EDU [131.179.64.200]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 32718160E8D; Wed, 9 Mar 2016 11:26:19 -0800 (PST) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.6.0 In-Reply-To: <83io0vo43x.fsf@gnu.org> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 131.179.128.68 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:201298 Archived-At: On 03/09/2016 11:14 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > This community is about software development, not about historical > research. When I'm looking up a commit, I want accurate information > about it. Like it or not, that is a form of historical research. One cannot escape the basic principles of history, and in particular one cannot insist that the historical record must be error-free. > >> There is a reasonable question about how much of our development effort >> should be devoted to sprucing up ChangeLogs after they're committed. I >> think this should be low priority, whereas as I understand it you would >> prefer that we boost its priority. Neither side is advocating >> untrustworthy ChangeLogs, or perfect ChangeLogs for that matter; it's >> mainly a question of where to allocate our scarce development resources. > I'm arguing that we shouldn't _need_ to allocate resources to it. > There is no free lunch here. There is a real cost to the old-fashioned approach of keeping commit messages as files in the repository. This cost is borne by every contributor, and the hassles of dealing with it was a primary motivation for Emacs (and other projects) moving away from that approach. Regardless of the approach taken, there is also a cost to sprucing up the historical record, a cost borne by the developers who do the sprucing-up. This sort of approach does work unless we devote real resources to it.