Re: [PATCH] Supporting git-merge-changelog

[Akim Demaille]

Le 26 août 08 à 08:11, Joel E. Denny a écrit :

> On Mon, 25 Aug 2008, Akim Demaille wrote:
>
> > > > Why do we still use the ChangeLogs?  git log is much
>
> One justification I can think of for keeping ChangeLog is any  
> remaining
> users of Bison CVS.  However, I've not seen any evidence of CVS users
> since we switched to git, so maybe they no longer exist.

OK.

> The only disadvantage I can think of for keeping ChangeLog is that  
> it is
> allowed to differ from git log.  During the conversion to git, authors
> were already replaced with committers in the log.

Hum, too bad indeed :(

> Other differences might
> evolve that make a developer wonder which is the right source of
> information.

But now that branches are so much easier to make, now that we can
polish our patches at home, I guess there will be much less late
changes.

> I like that svn allows you to make corrections to old entries in the  
> log.
> It is tempting to do the same with ChangeLog in git, but then it's
> prohibitively difficult to correct git log to match.  Maybe it's  
> best to
> remove the temptation by removing ChangeLog and just let the  
> occasional
> broken log entry remain.  That's the git way, it seems.

I would really remove the ChangeLog.  It's an EPITA when there
are merges, we don't even all have the same convention to mark
the end of a change (some simply put an empty line, others like
me put again the full date-id banner) etc.  And finally, when
you have the ChangeLog entry, *very* often you need to see the
actual patch, in which case you're doomed to search again.

Using the VC's log considerably simplifies this.

I have used svn for years, and sticked to fill the ChangeLog.
It was really useful to have it because it contained information
that svn could not provide that information offline.  With git
I lost my last reasons to maintain a ChangeLog.