Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?

[Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK)]

Dear GNU Hackers,


In quite a few guides I saw people suggest using the foreign automake
style to avoid having to create the required text files.

The goal of this email is to get more people to use the GNU style, so
the interface for understanding an autotools project becomes more
consistent again: GNU style should become standard for all guides.


Among the required files, NEWS is easy to create but cannot be guessed
automatically because it is intended for humans, and README is becoming
standard (again) due to most code hosting sites using it as the summary
page. AUTHORS and ChangeLog normally only contain information which
already available in most version tracking systems - and can be created
easily from that.

If autotools did this automatically, the barrier for using GNU style in
the autotools with a version tracking system would be much smaller: Just
write README and NEWS.


I initially planned to just send a small example script, but that
matured faster than I had expected, so you can now find it at


https://bitbucket.org/ArneBab/autochangelog/src/tip/create-or-update-changelog-and-authors.sh

If someone with git-foo could cleanup the git ChangeLog creation to
conform with the GNU ChangeLog standard, that script should be a good
working example.

The script only touches files which were created by the script or are
missing.


Best wishes,
Arne

PS: I initially sent this mail to the autoconf list. The original
discussion is at [1] and includes the gnulib script which roughly does
for git what I propose here. Doing this in automake would have the
advantage that all users benefit from the lower barrier of entry to the
consistent GNU style.

[1]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2014-10/msg00000.html

-- 
Doktorand
Gruppe: GHG

Raum: 435/410
Tel.: +49 721 608-22885
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Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
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