From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Ted Zlatanov Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs? 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X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 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" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:205477 Archived-At: On Sat, 09 Jul 2016 12:54:48 -0400 Richard Stallman wrote: >> This can easily be encoded in a database table so it's searchable, >> indexed by symbol name or file name (to build a history), etc. as part >> of the pull request system. It can be semi-automatic: the system figures >> out the file and symbol changes, then the developer adds the rest (and >> the review doesn't end until this is done). RS> Given a program that can determine which function or entity name RS> to associate with each line, it would not be hard to make a list of RS> which entities are changed in a given patch. RS> Do we have such a program? I don't know that we do. RS> However, determining what kind of change was made to a certain entity RS> in a certain patch is much harder. Consider this: RS> * file.c (create_swimming_pool): New function RS> (modernize_building): Call it. RS> How would a program decide whether "Call it." is enough to say about RS> the change in modernize_building, or whether it is necessary to say RS> more? You're right, of course. But I wasn't saying the program would do the entire job. It will know *what* has changed and provide a place to enter the *why* messages. Then the code reviewer will require those messages before approving the merge. That's essentially what ChangeLogs do, but this will be in a structured format so it's easier to index and analyze the data. A good first iteration of this would be a mechanism to generate the structured data from a patch/diff, which would then hook into the current mechanism to generate ChangeLog-style entries in the commit message. (Currently this is a mostly manual process, I believe.) That would benefit everyone right away by speeding up the ChangeLog format generation, and can then be used for the more elaborate system when and if we decide. Ted