bug#68691: 30.0.50; [WISHLIST] Make it easier to conform to desired commit message format

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2024 17:07:25 -0800
> Cc: iarchivedmywholelife@gmail.com, 68691@debbugs.gnu.org, luangruo@yahoo.com
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > The reason we keep the ChangeLog format is that then the ChangeLog
> > files generated from the Git logs and included in the release tarballs
> > are useful on their own, without the need to use Git and have the
> > repository cloned on the end user's machine.  Admittedly, systems
> > where Emacs is installed but Git access to our repository is limited
> > or non-existent are relatively rare these days, but they do exist (I
> > personally have to work on such a system, FWIW).  Being able to grep
> > the ChangeLog files locally is an advantage in those cases.
> 
> I'm not saying users that read them don't exist, I just think they're
> rare.  My guess is that ChangeLog files are consulted far less often
> than NEWS, and we know how often that happens.
> 
> But if we still consider these files useful, I think we could also
> create them starting from something like `git log --stat', and then
> generating the rest.  We wouldn't get a perfect result, perhaps, but we
> could probably get 99 % of the way there if we really wanted to.

The script which generates ChangeLog files from Git logs is not
maintained by us, so this suggestion should go to the Gnulib folks, I
think.  If they succeed in generating the files and variables touched
by a given change mechanically, we can modify our conventions to ask
contributors to provide only the part that explains the change, its
rationale and important aspects, something that a program cannot
produce.