On Thu, 5 Jul 2018, Richard Kenner wrote: > > After 20 years of hacking on GCC I feel like I have literally wasted > > days of my life typing out ChangeLog entries that could have easily been > > generated programmatically. > > > > Can someone refresh my memory here, what are the remaining arguments for > > requiring ChangeLog entries? > > I take the position that any ChangeLog entry that could have been generated > automatically is not a good one. Yes, the list of functions changed could > be generated automatically. (Isn't there actually a way to do that in > emacs? I could have sworn I saw it, though I never used it much.) But the > *purpose* of the change to that function can't be generated automatically > because the ChangeLog entry is the only place that should have that > information. The comments should say what a function currently does, but > isn't the place for a history lesson. That data belongs only in ChangeLog
GCC ChangeLogs don't record the purpose of the change. They say what changed, but not why. As far as I know, this ChangeLog style helped in pre-Subversion times when source control tools tracked changes per-file, not per-tree. Alexander
