Re: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs?

[Ingo Lohmar]

On Tue, Mar 08 2016 22:37 (+0200), Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Using Git is not a problem for me.  The problem is that the
> information in Git log is unreliable.  The other problem is that will
> never succeed in teaching new contributors how to make good log
> messages unless we have an easy way of fixing mistakes there.


Some arguments in this thread are repeated ad infinitum although they
don't seem to stand a little scrutiny.  "git log" messages cannot
technically be both immutable and unreliable: At least there is some
severely imprecise use of language going on.

As to the teaching argument: I have read every single message in this
thread, and nobody has argued for lower (but several people for higher)
commit message standards.

In contrast to your opinion, it seems to me that fixing mistakes in the
Changelogs teaches a contributor who has committed with a flawed commit
message that it's not really important.  They, or somebody else, can
clean up their (incl. possibly my) mess.  As Oscar has argued, having
the original commit rejected (by means to be discussed, and only until
people have shown good judgment and discipline) teaches them that commit
messages matter.

The whole argument for Changelogs comes down to a) being an established
band-aid to clean up spilt milk, or b) providing a fixed-form summary of
things that can be obtained using the VCS (provided the humans or tools
wirting the Changelog are as "reliable" as the VCS).