RE: Why maintain old style ChangeLog?

[Drew Adams]

> I agree that the facilities of the version control system do 
> provide you with lots of additional functionality, much of
> which does duplicate what was previously provided via ChangeLog.
> However, I don't think it is an either/or situation.
> 
> Many people don't run a full version control branch. Instead they just
> download a snapshot or tar ball. These people don't ahve the version
> control history and meta data. For them, the change log is important.

I'd even go so far as to say that delivering a complete change history is part
of the politeness (and freedom) of delivering a program's source code.
Likewise, documentation.

Sure, we could make users jump through hoops to get this info, but why hinder
them?  We could also deliver only binary executables and make them try to
reverse-engineer some source code based on the machine etc. ;-)

Consideration, cooperation, and civility demand giving users as much info as you
have about your program, from soup (requirements descriptions: what it's
supposed to do), through multiple other courses (design descriptions: how it
works, source code with comments, documentation), to nuts (the working binary).