From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 16419 invoked by alias); 3 Dec 2007 04:51:54 -0000 Received: (qmail 16410 invoked by uid 22791); 3 Dec 2007 04:51:53 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from wa-out-1112.google.com (HELO wa-out-1112.google.com) (209.85.146.176) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Mon, 03 Dec 2007 04:51:47 +0000 Received: by wa-out-1112.google.com with SMTP id m16so4698758waf for ; Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:51:45 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.143.1.2 with SMTP id d2mr1274588wfi.1196657505030; Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:51:45 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.142.217.1 with HTTP; Sun, 2 Dec 2007 20:51:44 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4aca3dc20712022051u7bafa9bbqba7ef27f13dce46f@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 04:51:00 -0000 From: "Daniel Berlin" To: "Richard Kenner" Subject: Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages Cc: dewar@adacore.com, gcc@gcc.gnu.org, hp@bitrange.com, sam@rfc1149.net In-Reply-To: <10712030406.AA12801@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <2007-12-02-11-05-39+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <2007-12-02-11-52-03+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <20071202065558.S8303@dair.pair.com> <47533F95.5080608@adacore.com> <10712030406.AA12801@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> 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/msg00056.txt.bz2 On 12/2/07, Richard Kenner wrote: > > If all the changelog entry says is something like > > > > (xyz): new function > > > > I don't see much point, since a diff can always easily tell > > you *what* was changed. > > The point is that, by just looking at the ChangeLog, you can tell when > xyz was introduced and by whom. I've used that quite a number of > times. Moreover, as was pointed out, when you have a source > distribution, you don't get the commit logs, just the ChangeLog. There are in fact, already programs that will generate GNU format changelogs from svn log (see http://ch.tudelft.nl/~arthur/svn2cl/) It would be very easy to run these as part of the release process. Last time I looked, this is in fact how some GNU projects generate ChangeLog for distribution! >