From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 29417 invoked by alias); 2 Dec 2007 23:03:02 -0000 Received: (qmail 29403 invoked by uid 22791); 2 Dec 2007 23:03:01 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from E23SMTP05.au.ibm.com (HELO e23smtp05.au.ibm.com) (202.81.18.174) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:02:51 +0000 Received: from sd0109e.au.ibm.com (d23rh905.au.ibm.com [202.81.18.225]) by e23smtp05.au.ibm.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id lB2N2gWZ021705 for ; Mon, 3 Dec 2007 10:02:42 +1100 Received: from d23av04.au.ibm.com (d23av04.au.ibm.com [9.190.235.139]) by sd0109e.au.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.13.8/NCO v8.7) with ESMTP id lB2N6MEu073290 for ; Mon, 3 Dec 2007 10:06:22 +1100 Received: from d23av04.au.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d23av04.au.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.13.3) with ESMTP id lB2N2U8M012687 for ; Mon, 3 Dec 2007 10:02:30 +1100 Received: from ozlabs.au.ibm.com (ozlabs.au.ibm.com [9.190.163.12]) by d23av04.au.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id lB2N2UAB012415; Mon, 3 Dec 2007 10:02:30 +1100 Received: from [10.61.2.156] (haven.au.ibm.com [9.190.164.82]) (using SSLv3 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by ozlabs.au.ibm.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 04D6E73681; Mon, 3 Dec 2007 10:02:13 +1100 (EST) Subject: Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages From: Ben Elliston To: Samuel Tardieu Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org In-Reply-To: <2007-12-02-11-05-39+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> References: <2007-12-02-11-05-39+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:03:00 -0000 Message-Id: <1196636533.16908.5.camel@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.12.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2007-12/txt/msg00042.txt.bz2 > This *is* the information I would expect to be present somewhere in > GCC history. A clear and detailed information on why the change was > necessary. Sure, in some case the checkin references a PR, but the PR > often contains information of what didn't work before the change and > the same information which is already repeated three times (ChangeLog, > svn log and svn diff). Keep in mind that the GNU coding standard introduced ChangeLogs before networked version control systems. In those days, you would receive a GCC release tarball with a ChangeLog. There was no way to do "svn log" or "svn diff" operations. Even in recent years, I have worked on GCC trees that were exported from the version control systems of other companies and that I did not have access to. In these situations, ChangeLogs are quite a bit more valuable. Having said that, I find the lack of rationale for some changes to be a bit irritating. I know that this should be done through code comments, but those are often made across the changeset and in different files. There is rarely a single summary of the need for the change. It would be nice to consider a practice similar to that used by NetBSD, which is to use a paragraph or so describing the need for the change (similar to what we do when we introduce a patch on gcc-patches) and inserting that comment into the svn commit message. Ben