bug#19113: Generate a ChangeLog file from commit logs

[Paul Eggert]

Tags: patch

Attached are two patches to change the Emacs repository so that the distributed 
ChangeLog file is generated automatically from commit logs, instead of being 
maintained manually.  The first patch renames every ChangeLog file to 
ChangeLog.1 (or whatever) to get it out of the way -- that is, all existing 
ChangeLog files are retained in the repository as before.  The second patch 
arranges for the new ChangeLog file to be generated automatically from future 
commit messages.  The idea is that developers should continue to write commit 
messages in ChangeLog style, so the automatic generation is straightforward, but 
they needn't record their commit messages in ChangeLog files.  This approach was 
developed by Jim Meyering is used by several other GNU packages.

This is a first cut, and no doubt could be improved for Emacs, but I thought I'd 
start the ball rolling by publishing something that works for me.

These patches are relative to emacs-24 commit cd2e816 
<2014-11-19T19:29:40Z!eggert@cs.ucla.edu>.

PS.  The first patch would be about 12 MB, so I'm attaching an abbreviated 
summary of it instead of the actual patch; it can be reproduced using the 
summary's recipe.

0001-Rename-old-ChangeLog-files-to-prepare-for-gitlog-to-.patch
Description: Text Data

0002-Generate-a-ChangeLog-file-from-commit-logs.patch
Description: Text Data