Re: ChangeLog API

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Even if we had such an API, enforcing it as a requirement for a package's
>> inclusion in GNU ELPA -- otherwise, most packages would probably ignore it --
>> would be rather heavy-weight. Further, the result would likely be a large
>> volume of information for you to ingest. I don't see the cost/benefit ratio
>> adding up for an API like this.
> We already have a notion of per-file change logs, though:

*GNU* ELPA packages include a ChangeLog that's auto-generated from the git
log, and is hence at a 100% standardized place.
So we could use that, to some extent.

The problem is that this is ChangeLog, whereas what the end user would
like to see, usually is a NEWS.

Still, we could add to package.el some function to try and extract the
ChangeLog from an installed package.  And then compare the ChangeLog
before upgrade to the ChangeLog after upgrade, to show the user
what's actually changed.

It would then be pretty easy to improve the code so that it uses a NEWS
section in preference to the ChangeLog section, when available.


        Stefan