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: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 08:34:04 -0800 Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Message-ID: <56DEFEFC.3010404@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> <1ceba0e3-b8a7-393d-ce41-213aee11b7f8@yandex.ru> <83si01rn0y.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 1457454867 23615 80.91.229.3 (8 Mar 2016 16:34:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 16:34:27 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Mar 08 17:34:19 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 1adKaR-0001lw-6u for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:34:19 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35734 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adKaQ-0000rl-Oe for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:34:18 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:48247) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adKaK-0000r8-FK for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:34:16 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adKaJ-0002RV-JU for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:34:12 -0500 Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([131.179.128.68]:36135) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adKaE-0002QF-Lb; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:34:06 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id E7A20160504; Tue, 8 Mar 2016 08:34:05 -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 j3QqzJacB1hW; Tue, 8 Mar 2016 08:34:05 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 30FE7160E46; Tue, 8 Mar 2016 08:34:05 -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 kqga-W-zEGjK; Tue, 8 Mar 2016 08:34:05 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from [192.168.1.9] (pool-100-32-155-148.lsanca.fios.verizon.net [100.32.155.148]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 0F8DC160504; Tue, 8 Mar 2016 08:34:05 -0800 (PST) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.6.0 In-Reply-To: <83si01rn0y.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:201171 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii wrote: > You (and some others) say the format and the content in the log > messages are important, and I agree. But if we do care about them, > how can we NOT clean them up? We can care about them, but agree to fix them up only until they become part of history. Once they're history we don't worry about trying to change history; they're just old mistakes that are part of the log but are not otherwise part of the current Emacs. If managed well, this can help motivate contributors to write good commit messages the first time. This approach is not perfect, but it works reasonably well in other projects and it is way easier to explain and to maintain than what we're doing now, or what we did a year ago. With version control systems our natural perfectionist inclinations can cause us to want to rewrite history to make ourselves look more error-free than we actually were. In extreme cases (e.g., massive copyright infringement committed by a rogue developer) we would indeed need to rewrite history, despite all the hassles that would ensue with Git (hassle that would not be limited to commit-message contents!). However, in ordinary use we should resist the temptation to change history; at best it's makework. So, for example, we should strive to get the "tiny change" stuff right the first time in commit messages; but if we make mistakes in that area it OK -- the sky will not fall down, and software archaeologists of the future will still be able to figure things out well enough.