Re: Tramp changelog entries messes up lisp/ChangeLog

[Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>]

storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> I would suggest creating a new lisp/net/tramp/ directory and move
> the tramp*.el files there, and create a separate ChangeLog file there.
> I suppose it will then make sense to move all of the tramp related
> changelog entries from lisp/ChangeLog to lisp/net/tramp/ChangeLog.

But will you do this for every package that is maintained externally?
And even if the order is wrong -- when exactly will that confuse us?
I only ever use ChangeLog entries when I want to answer questions like
"what where the recent changes related to file/variable/function foo"
-- and for that, there need only be a very rough ordering of items.
Essentially, changes for every file, every variable, and every
function should be more or less chronological, but not the entries by
themselves.  Let me illustrate.

This is OK, because all A changes are ordered, and all B changes are
ordered:

2003-02-03  changes B
2003-02-02  changes B
 * time warp *
2003-02-05  changes A
2003-02-04  changes A
2003-02-01  changes B

This is not OK, because searching backwards for B will yield confusing
results.  But even then, if there are no unreasonable jumps in the
order of changes to B, I would not mind:

2003-02-03  changes B
2003-02-02  changes C
 * time warp *
2003-02-05  changes B
2003-02-04  changes A
2003-02-01  changes B

In this case, two different people changed B after 2003-02-01, and
perhaps one of them even had to resolve conflicts, and that would
explain the time line.  But as I said -- I will often use C-s to
search for some item foo, and jump up and down in the ChangeLog.  So
as long as it is just aproximately correct, I don't mind time warps.

Alex.