On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 01:49:34PM +0000, Thorsten Glaser wrote: > I've always found the FSF's ChangeLog policy a bit weird > (for CVS projects - for RCS projects it's understandable).
The ChangeLog fulfills a sometimes-ignored legal requirement of the GPL: > 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion > of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and > distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 > above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: > a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices > stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. The ChangeLog, maintained in the standard way for FSF projects, fulfills this requirement when it accompanies the sources. But it, or something like it, has to be there. (we could nitpick here; the ChangeLog is a separate file, but normally it goes with the distribution so we're covered). Now, we could instead auto-generate the ChangeLog from Subversion history entries, since the information contained there is the same. But we have to wind up with something like a ChangeLog in any distributed version of GCC. It might make the most sense to go the auto-generation route, and then the standard for checkin comments would be to use the ChangeLog format. The ChangeLog can then be generated by just appending the entries together, and tacking the "legacy ChangeLog" onto the end.
