From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs? Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2016 21:59:02 -0500 Message-ID: References: <56BE7E37.3090708@cs.ucla.edu> <4hd1rw1ubr.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <83vb50wxhv.fsf@gnu.org> <87y49vz4cg.fsf@acer.localhost.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1457405979 31772 80.91.229.3 (8 Mar 2016 02:59:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 02:59:39 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Mar 08 03:59:30 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 1ad7rs-00081a-RJ for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 03:59:28 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59795 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ad7rs-0002Up-BS for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 07 Mar 2016 21:59:28 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:36608) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ad7ro-0002Ui-Le for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 07 Mar 2016 21:59:25 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ad7rj-00025G-Ha for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 07 Mar 2016 21:59:24 -0500 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:55103) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ad7rj-00025C-Au for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 07 Mar 2016 21:59:19 -0500 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ad7rg-0007rQ-Dd for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 03:59:16 +0100 Original-Received: from 157.52.15.125 ([157.52.15.125]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 03:59:16 +0100 Original-Received: from monnier by 157.52.15.125 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 03:59:16 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 46 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 157.52.15.125 User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.1.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:e4TXQidconIDpkE9iYuAiY7rfjA= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 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:201105 Archived-At: > I'd like to open this up to discussion on emacs-devel, so that we hear from > our other developers. What do you all think about ChangeLogs, and their value > to you in your work on Emacs? I couldn't care less about ChangeLog *files*, really. I think it makes sense to provide them in tarballs (to replace the Git metadata), but I've personally stopped using them years ago when "bzr log" started being fast enough. But OTOH I strongly oppose getting rid of the ChangeLog format in commit messages. My experience with commit messages is that it's very difficult for people to know what should go in a commit message (especially so for less experienced coders, but even for experienced coders it's difficult to guess what information will turn out to be important). The ChangeLog format's rules gives a very good baseline for that. Even if some of that info seems redundant, the act of describing all the parts that are changed, encourages the coder to pay attention to every part of the diff she's about to commit. The original ChangeLog format lacked a high-level description of the intention behind the changes, so the rules we currently use in Emacs is to use something of the form: If we were to drop the "ChangeLog-style details", we'd end up with very little guidance as to what to put in the commit message, so we'd have even more trouble getting contributors to start providing acceptable commit messages. My experience (when trying to figure out, years later, why such and such line of code was changed in that particular way) is that ChangeLog-style details don't always give you the info you want, but at least they tend to say *something* about your particular line (because they have to talk about every part of the diff), whereas the high level description is too often too high-level and hence not detailed enough for that. Stefan