From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: John Darrington Subject: Re: none Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2014 18:38:12 +0100 Message-ID: <20140205173812.GA32229@jocasta.intra> References: <1391526759-18655-1-git-send-email-jmd@gnu.org> <87ha8ebo68.fsf@gnu.org> <87fvnxy1nu.fsf@netris.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="UugvWAfsgieZRqgk" Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:40780) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WB6Qd-0000rM-6Y for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 05 Feb 2014 12:38:31 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WB6QZ-0001Yt-2k for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 05 Feb 2014 12:38:27 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87fvnxy1nu.fsf@netris.org> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Mark H Weaver Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org, John Darrington --UugvWAfsgieZRqgk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 11:17:25AM -0500, Mark H Weaver wrote: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Court??s) writes: =20 > John Darrington skribis: > >> In my opinion the changelog conventions are achronistic, unintuitiv= e, >> and bring benefit neither to developers nor users. > > Well, opinions may vary. > > It benefits me when I review other people???s patches, because it he= lps me > understand the structure of the change. And it benefits me before I > commit something, because it forces me to review all of my patch, ma= ke > sure it???s consistent, make sure there???s no leftover, and giving = me an > opportunity to add comments to code that appears non-obvious in > hindsight. =20 I also find them very useful when digging through (possibly ancient) commit history. Although all the information is in the actual patch, when looking through many commits it is much more convenient to read a summary of the changes. One summary line is not enough detail. =20 Of course, it's extra work to write these summaries, but IMO it's worthwhile. I don't object to the spending time of writing changelogs. I just think th= e=20 information that the GCS suggests is not helpful. It is not usefull to say= =20 changed file foo.scm, because using git show that is obvious. There is eve= n a=20 perl script out in the wild somewhere to generate exactly that. Typing it= =20 in is redundant.=20 What would be useful (but in general) we don't put in the changelogs is WH= Y a developer changed foo.scm Put yourself in the shoes of a person investigat= ing a problem in 3 years' time. He can see that developer fred did X. He doesn't need fred to tell him that. What he needs is fred to explain his reasoning= for=20 doing X not a statement that he has done it. That way he can make an infor= med decision about which way to take the code now. =20 J' =20 --=20 PGP Public key ID: 1024D/2DE827B3=20 fingerprint =3D 8797 A26D 0854 2EAB 0285 A290 8A67 719C 2DE8 27B3 See http://sks-keyservers.net or any PGP keyserver for public key. --UugvWAfsgieZRqgk Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlLydwQACgkQimdxnC3oJ7Po6ACfVWIJDtbeF10NdSRjLIYgLuFa ojUAn3U0nl9QlRyWQ6k139BMRIoF1a+F =Om9r -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --UugvWAfsgieZRqgk--