Re: git history tracking across renames (and emacs support)

[João Távora]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: João Távora <address@hidden>
>> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2018 23:36:56 +0100
>> Cc: Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>, Clément Pit-Claudel <address@hidden>, 
>>      address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
>> 
>> To be fair, there isn't even any copy-paste involved if you use 
>> vc-next-action and such.
>> 
>> But that doesn't mean it's not horribly impractical. I hate the
>> ChangeLog buffers, especially how they interact
>> with save-some-buffers because invariably I end up saving them inadvertently.
>
> Why is it a problem to save ChangeLog to its file?  Our .gitignore
> already ignores such a file. I have a local ChangeLog file full of
> log messages I used for commits I pushed.
>
>> Would a patch for this be welcome?
>
> I'd need to see the patch, of course.  For now, I'm afraid I don't
> understand the problem.

To be clear, it's a minor annoyance (that's what "horribly impractical"
means to me :-)) but it's repeated across all my projects, because I use
this format there too.

So I typically end up having around 5 ChangeLog files per session.
Generally, because the ChangeLog _file_ is now a useless intermediary,
any friction it gives me is too much.

Now the actual annoyance:

1.  save-some-buffers constantly nags me about saving the useless file
    ChangeLog.  I worked around this with a
    save-some-buffers-default-predicate, but sometimes I like to work
    from Emacs -Q (typically after reproducing a bug) and I'm still
    annoyed there.

2.  killing the ChangeLog buffer in other situations (when generally
    cleaning up my buffer list) also prompts me about saving it;
    
3.  when performing multiple commits to one project on the same day,
    vc-next-action blindly copies all entries for the day, duplicating
    entries in my commit message.  So I have to remember to kill the
    buffer before the first `C-x 4 a' of the commit I'm about to do.
    Which means I have to find it in my buffer list, and then it asks me
    if I want to save it ("grrr, no! yes! whatever!").  Alternatively, I
    can find the buffer and delete its contents, also kind-of
    impractical.  Alternatively, what I've been doing recently, is to
    issue the first `C-x 4 a' just to find the dang buffer, then delete
    everything, then `C-x o', then do that same `C-x 4 a' again.  It
    works, but feels kinda silly.

4.  When I do need, for whatever reason, to manually copy-paste from the
    ChangeLog buffer, it annoys me that the indentation is not the same.
    It also annoys me that fontification and fill-paragraph doesn't work
    in vc-git-log-edit-mode like it does in change-log-mode.  Can it be
    made to?

So the patch I envison would address some or all of these points
friction (and would be optional, for those who for some reason really
like to have a file-supported ChangeLog buffer around).

But perhaps, before spending time on the patch, you or someone else can
tell me if you use ChangeLog for more projects than Emacs and/or how you
avoid these annoyances.

João