Re: ChangeLogs in the elpa branch

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

Stefan Monnier wrote:

> The decision for Emacs ChangeLogs was "to keep them for now".

I'm very much against getting rid of ChangeLogs, but every time the
issue has been mentioned it has been with some kind of "but we won't do
this now", so I never know when to voice my objections. Seems like now
may be too late, and this is not a democracy anyway, but here goes:

Reasons I object to getting rid of ChangeLogs:

1) Using Emacs VC, you only have to write the ChangeLog, then use C-c
C-a to insert it into the commit buffer. So there is no need to "write
the same thing twice".

2) Sometimes I want to put more detail into the commit log, which is
not appropriate for the ChangeLog.

3) ChangeLogs can be edited to correct mistakes, commit logs cannot.

4) I have the impression that having to write ChangeLogs leads to
higher quality entries than just using commit logs would.

Reasons I can see why people want to do this:

1) It makes merging between branches a bit easier.

I don't think this is a compelling reason to change practice.
bzr has a changelog_merge plugin that makes this easier, and I wrote
some notes on how to use it with Emacs. Anyone who feels burdended by
having to merge ChangeLogs between branches should try it out. It seems
like a simple problem, conceptually.

Personally I think the slight extra time involved in maintaining a
ChangeLog is more than justified by the higher quality of said log.