Re: Abolishing ChangeLog files

[Steve Youngs <steve@sxemacs.org>]

* Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

  > Emacs ChangeLog files are not redundant with VC change records.
  > We put different information in them.  At least, I do.

You're probably a part of a quite small minority that does.  In most
cases where I have come across projects that use a modern SCM and
ChangeLog files they end up doing "double-accounting-logging" with a lot
of copy-pasting from one log to the other.

  > In the ChangeLog files I put lists of functions changed and how.
  > In the bzr log entry I explain the overall purpose of the change.

This may have made sense in the old days of limited featured VC's such
as RCS or CVS, but not anymore, not with today's tools.

Without looking it up I can't tell you what the very first change we
made to SXEmacs was, but I can say that eliminating the ChangeLog files
was one of the first.  Actually, I shouldn't say that the ChangeLog
files were "eliminated" because they still exist for the benefit of
people who use the tarball releases, but they are generated from the
SCM (tla in the beginning, git now).

  > There are various good ways to store the important change information,

Yes, but storing that information in two different places, even when
there isn't any overlap of info between the places, isn't one of them.
Why add a level of complexity, even a minor one like this, when you
don't need to?

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