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: Should we restore manually maintained ChangeLogs Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:14:14 -0500 Message-ID: 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 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1457453686 1444 80.91.229.3 (8 Mar 2016 16:14:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 16:14:46 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Mar 08 17:14:46 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 1adKHT-0004Ll-5t for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:14:43 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35588 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adKHS-0003ub-L8 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:14:42 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:40604) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adKHO-0003tN-KM for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:14:39 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adKHK-0003o3-NA for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:14:38 -0500 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:42539) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1adKHK-0003nd-DD for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 11:14:34 -0500 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1adKH7-00046H-LW for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:14:21 +0100 Original-Received: from 157-52-15-125.cpe.teksavvy.com ([157-52-15-125.cpe.teksavvy.com]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:14:21 +0100 Original-Received: from monnier by 157-52-15-125.cpe.teksavvy.com with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:14:21 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 45 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 157-52-15-125.cpe.teksavvy.com User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.1.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:37VgM7m4D5u2ah/kX7NvRG/XlnI= 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:201163 Archived-At: > 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? Having them in their current state > means they cannot be trusted, which is worse than not having them at > all. For people like me who solely rely on the VCS commit messages when doing forensics (because I find it tremendously more powerful, e.g. via vc-region-history or vc-annotate), it's already the case that mistakes can't be corrected, no matter what we do with ChangeLog files. So for my own personal self, the issue is not "should we keep ChangeLog" but "should we try and fix mistakes in commit messages": - either we do care about fixing the commit messages. In this case either we need to switch to a system that lets us review changes before they get to master, or we figure out a way to update commit messages after the fact (this is clearly a missing feature in Git and there's no reason it can't be implemented). - or we don't care enough, so we keep doing as we've been doing so far, i.e. relying on "best effort and education" to try and keep the mistakes to a tolerable level. So far we've been following a halfway path where we tolerate mistakes in the commit messages but not in the ChangeLog file, probably because there's a fairly strong correlation between those who care about mistakes in those messages and those who cares about the ChangeLog files. But really, fixing the ChangeLog while leaving the VCS commit messages unfixed is just not a good solution (to me, it's kind of like installing security fixes in the tarball rather than in the VCS repository). For those reasons, I think ChangeLog files should be 100% auto-generated, and never committed into the VCS. > Yes, a few of us don't need any corrections. But enough of us do, and > that's where the problem lies. It is that problem that we need to > fix. Leaving it unfixed makes your accurate work unreliable as well. Right. But if we need/want to fix it, we should do it *at the source* (i.e. in the VCS metadata) rather than only in some of the derived data (the ChangeLog files). Stefan