Re: Using VC for change descriptions

[Paul Eggert]

Joseph Myers wrote:
> As I understand the main issues raised by
> people with concerns about the proposal:
>
> * Some people currently use ChangeLogs while understanding changes to a
> project and would need to start using a different workflow if that project
> moved away from ChangeLog format.  I believe all the main use cases are
> adequately covered through use of distributed version control tools

I agree. "git log" and similar tools do everything ChangeLog files do, and more. 
New recruits are more likely to know these tools than to know ChangeLog format. 
For longstanding developers, the tools are easy to pick up and are well worth 
the effort to learn.
> While it might make
> sense for Savannah to have a service for mirroring version control history
> of GNU projects keeping their main repositories elsewhere, the Savannah
> admins are very busy and I don't think it makes sense for such a service
> to be a dependency of changing the requirements for how changes to GNU
> software are logged.

Yes, this should be fine as long as the main repositories use Git or some other 
distributed version control system where everybody who is interested has copies 
of all the history. Although I am also concerned about long-term availability, 
at this point I'd say that Git format (at least) is here to stay. And even if 
I'm wrong, we'll still be able to convert Git repositories back to 
ChangeLog-style files or to some other future format, just as we've done similar 
repository conversions in the past.