Re: Generating the ChangeLog files from the commit messages

[Paul Eggert]

Stefan Monnier wrote:

> It makes sense to roll those files on a release-number basis rather than
> just size.

That sounds like a good idea.

> What value would stop you from bumping into it, and on which kinds of
> files do you typically bump into it.

It's usually log files.  For example, if I run 'git log >/tmp/log', and then 
visit /tmp/log, that's about 34 MB for Emac.  Likewise for things like strace 
output or for random other text debugging output.

> > When the 10 MB limit was established back in 2003, machines typically
> > had 64 MiB or so of RAM.
>
> Reality check: my 2003-vintage X30 laptop (which I happily use when
> doing presentations) came with 768MB of RAM.

You had bigger machines than I did.  Even my circa-2005 laptop (which I still 
use) has only 512 MB of RAM.  Was the limit tuned for your new laptop back in 
2003?  In that case, perhaps we should warn if the file is larger than 1/64th of 
physical RAM, though this sounds a tad conservative to me.

> the size of human-edited files (the bread-and-butter for Emacs)
> hasn't increased nearly as much.

I mostly run into the problem when viewing files, not editing them, and the 
files I view can get pretty large.  Sometimes I have to give up on Emacs 
entirely and use 'less', which is an annoying switch.