Re: ChangeLogs

[Thorsten Meyer]

Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 1:45 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On  6-Jan-2009, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
>>
>> | Now that's an idea I really don't like (because of the amount of
>> | manual editing it brings).
>> | In that case, I'd vote for getting rid of ChangeLog files.
>>
>> Yes, I know it is extra work (I've done a lot of it).  But it is
>> easier than always inserting the ChangeLog entires separately (i.e.,
>> if they are not included in the diffs).
>>
>> | Using my approach, the entries bear their date of origin, but are
>> | sorted in the order they were applied, which I always found enough for
>> | all practical matters.
>>
>> To me, that is just confusing because it looks like the entries are
>> sorted incorrectly.
>>
>> | Sure; but what to do with the existing ChangeLog files? Can they be
>> | imported somehow into Mercurial? Can Savannah handle this? If we just
>> | leave them, the result will be sort of messy, won't it?
>>
>> We keep the old ChangeLog files with names like ChangeLog.1, same as
>> we always have.
>>
>> The information in the generated ChangeLog files is only from after
>> the time of the switch.
>>
> 
> OK, I'm fine with this solution. So, shall we do it now?
> 
> 
I also like this solution. Yet I am still a little confused about what it means 
in detail. Let me
try a little recap. The proposal seems to be this:
 - We no longer write ChangeLog entries
 - Instead write commit messages like in John's example:

    one line summary

    * file1.cc (function): What changed.
    (other_function): Other change.
    * file2.cc (function): Another change.

 - The old ChangeLog files are renamed to ChangeLog.number
 - ChangeLog files are generated using
     hg log --style=changelog
   with releases of octave.

I have a few questions:
 - how to we credit contributions of people who do not push to savannah 
themselves in the future?
   I think we should add the name of the contributor to the commit message 
(unless
   contributor=committing person).
 - Should we also add the creation date of the patch?
 - What should be the format of the commit
   message then?
 - Will there be some correspondence between the names of the NEWS files and 
the names of the
corresponding (autogenerated) ChangeLog files?
 - Or will there be only one big ChangeLog file containing everything changed 
from now on?


regards

Thorsten