>>>>> On Wed, 17 Sep 2014, Michał Górny wrote: > Dnia 2014-09-16, o godz. 10:18:35 > hasufell <hasuf...@gentoo.org> napisał(a):
>> Ulrich Mueller: >> > >> > ChangeLogs are aimed at users >> >> Did any1 ask them if they care? > A bit off-topic but asking such a question usually makes some > developers point out that they are users too and they do care :). > However, in this particular context it could be helpful to do some > research. As people have pointed out, users may actually prefer using > some git web-interface or git clone to get the details. It is two questions that need to be answered. The first question is if we want to keep a ChangeLog that is separate from commit messages. The second question (and it can only be answered after the first one) is how the information should be transmitted to users. It doesn't make sense to mix the two questions, or to answer the second one before the first. The original intention back in 2002 was having a ChangeLog containing information somewhat complementary to commit messages. This can still be found in skel.ChangeLog: | This changelog is targeted to users. This means that the comments | should be well explained and written in clean English. And: | Any details about what exactly changed in the code should be added | as a message when the changes are committed to cvs, not in this | file. That different messages can be used was acknowledged in the November 2011 council meeting (and yours truly had voted in favour of it): | The Council agreed that developers are free to use different | messages for ChangeLog and commit, but they are responsible for the | messages, and the Council still expects appropriate messages to be | used. So the research that needs to be done first is to find out how often our ChangeLog entries differ from the commit log. If it turns out that they are identical in 99 % of all cases, then it obviously makes no sense to maintain the same information in two places, and ChangeLogs should be abandoned. (For my own commits, I would estimate that messages are different for 20 % of commits.) Only when this has been answered, we should discuss how the information should be formatted and how users should obtain it. Some ideas: - We could have an echangelog replacement (integrated into repoman?) for nice formatting of commit messages. - If we abandon separately maintained ChangeLog files, then there should be some means for correcting mistakes in commit messages. Maybe "git notes" could be used? - There is certainly room for improvement how to communicate news about a package to users, apart from elog messages and GLEP 42 news items. Maybe readme.gentoo.eclass could be extended to optionally install a NEWS.gentoo file along with README.gentoo? Ulrich
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