From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 19553 invoked by alias); 4 Dec 2007 22:10:13 -0000 Received: (qmail 19539 invoked by uid 22791); 4 Dec 2007 22:10:13 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mx1.redhat.com (HELO mx1.redhat.com) (66.187.233.31) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:10:09 +0000 Received: from int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (int-mx1.corp.redhat.com [172.16.52.254]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.13.8/8.13.1) with ESMTP id lB4MA6Zw025673; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 17:10:06 -0500 Received: from [10.11.15.69] (vpn-15-69.rdu.redhat.com [10.11.15.69]) by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id lB4MA3UI029509; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 17:10:03 -0500 Subject: Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages From: Jeffrey Law Reply-To: law@redhat.com To: Richard Kenner Cc: dberlin@dberlin.org, bernds_cb1@t-online.de, ebotcazou@libertysurf.fr, gcc@gcc.gnu.org, sam@rfc1149.net, schwab@suse.de In-Reply-To: <10712031329.AA20246@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> References: <2007-12-02-11-05-39+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <200712022136.57819.ebotcazou@libertysurf.fr> <4aca3dc20712021240k19f3eae5j66453276179c401a@mail.gmail.com> <200712022355.23871.ebotcazou@libertysurf.fr> <4aca3dc20712021621n39a036d2u21f471f231dfffe@mail.gmail.com> <10712031329.AA20246@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:10:00 -0000 Message-Id: <1196805952.11808.20.camel@omfg.slc.redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.21.2 (2.21.2-1.fc9) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-IsSubscribed: yes 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/msg00109.txt.bz2 On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 08:29 -0500, Richard Kenner wrote: > > Sorry, but again, this is not a good enough justification to me. > > We do a lot of things different than "The GNU Project". > > So do plenty of parts of the "official GNU project". > > They use different coding standards, bug tracking systems, version > > control systems, checkin policies, etc, than each other. > > Yes, but none of those are visible other than to the development community. > People who obtain the source distributions of projects don't get to see > those things. They DO see things like the ChangeLog format and coding > and documentation conventions and THOSE are the things that need to be > common among GNU projects. > > In my view, ChangeLog is mostly "write-only" from a developer's > perspective. It's a document that the GNU project requires us to produce > for the benefit of people who DON'T want access to our checkin-logs, bug > tracking information, and mailing lsits. But for our own development > purposes, we use the above information much more than ChangeLog. Right. I don't necessarily want verbose ChangeLogs -- there are times I just want to know what changed and who changed it. That's nice and easy to extract from the ChangeLog. Sometimes I want to look at the code/comments. Obviously I go to the source to read those. Sometimes I want even more information for a particularly complex or controversial change -- in those cases I go back to the mailing list archives and review the discussion(s) leading to changes to the code. Each repository of information provides a different level of detail and each (IMHO) has its place/utility. Jeff