From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?R=FCdiger?= Sonderfeld Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Generating ChangeLog files. Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2014 10:31:39 +0100 Message-ID: <10213981.FjEGGXvRcv@descartes> References: <20140102095347.6834E381D0C@snark.thyrsus.com> <8761q1ljny.fsf@gmail.com> <87lhyxqztz.fsf@gmx.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1388741517 6639 80.91.229.3 (3 Jan 2014 09:31:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2014 09:31:57 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Michael Albinus , Thierry Volpiatto To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jan 03 10:32:00 2014 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 1Vz16l-0003OI-AP for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 03 Jan 2014 10:31:59 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:48812 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Vz16k-00085h-VB for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 03 Jan 2014 04:31:58 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:45799) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Vz16d-00085V-29 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Jan 2014 04:31:56 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Vz16X-0000rE-7r for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Jan 2014 04:31:50 -0500 Original-Received: from ptmx.org ([178.63.28.110]:39083) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Vz16X-0000pF-13 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 03 Jan 2014 04:31:45 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ptmx.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EAA2D22E99; Fri, 3 Jan 2014 10:31:43 +0100 (CET) X-Virus-Scanned: Debian amavisd-new at ptmx.org Original-Received: from ptmx.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (ptmx.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id ajM6wlZE9hBY; Fri, 3 Jan 2014 10:31:41 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from descartes.localnet (p5DD554C7.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [93.213.84.199]) by ptmx.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id A353C22E06; Fri, 3 Jan 2014 10:31:41 +0100 (CET) User-Agent: KMail/4.11.3 (Linux/3.11.0-14-generic; KDE/4.11.3; x86_64; ; ) In-Reply-To: <87lhyxqztz.fsf@gmx.de> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 178.63.28.110 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:167130 Archived-At: On Friday 03 January 2014 08:39:04 Michael Albinus wrote: > Thierry Volpiatto writes: > > Also would be great to stop writing unuseful changelog files. >=20 > They are useful. A tar distribution does not contain the git repo wit= h > the history of commitments. >=20 > Another question is, whether we still want to write ChangeLogs manual= ly, > or whether we want to extract them from commit comments. That's not s= uch > easy, see all the "fix typo" comments. I think we should generate the ChangeLogs from commit messages. I know= that=20 one argument raised in the past was that the commit message and ChangeL= og can=20 differ. But I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be possible to have = both in=20 the commit message. Only the ChangeLog part is added to the generated=20= ChangeLog. This would also allow "fix typo" commits not to be added. IMO ChangeLogs are an atavism from times when VCS's were not as sophist= icated=20 as today. They cause more problems for developers than they are useful= . A=20 modern VCS provides tools to more easily match changes to commits than=20= searching a ChangeLog can. They are a pain when merging or rebasing pa= tches. =20 I usually write patches on a branch and rebase them when they are ready= to be=20 pushed. This always causes merge conflicts for the ChangeLog. (Maybe = [1]=20 could help a bit.) E.g., GNU Octave replaced ChangeLog with an auto-generated ChangeLog fr= om=20 commit messages and they seem to be quite happy with that solution. I know the topic has been discussed several times and it seems a bit po= intless=20 to start the discussion again. But in my opinion ChangeLogs are an eve= n=20 bigger issue than the VC because at least I can work around the latter = by=20 using git-bzr. [1] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=3Dgnulib.git;a=3Dblob;f=3Dlib= /git-merge-changelog.c Regards R=C3=BCdiger