From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 19907 invoked by alias); 2 Dec 2007 23:31:09 -0000 Received: (qmail 19890 invoked by uid 22791); 2 Dec 2007 23:31:05 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mail.codesourcery.com (HELO mail.codesourcery.com) (65.74.133.4) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:31:01 +0000 Received: (qmail 32226 invoked from network); 2 Dec 2007 23:30:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO digraph.polyomino.org.uk) (joseph@127.0.0.2) by mail.codesourcery.com with ESMTPA; 2 Dec 2007 23:30:59 -0000 Received: from jsm28 (helo=localhost) by digraph.polyomino.org.uk with local-esmtp (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1IyyH4-00025z-2L; Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:30:58 +0000 Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:31:00 -0000 From: "Joseph S. Myers" To: Daniel Berlin cc: Bernd Schmidt , Richard Kenner , schwab@suse.de, gcc@gcc.gnu.org, sam@rfc1149.net Subject: Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages In-Reply-To: <4aca3dc20712021227l666309jf7da5c53e9c68352@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: References: <2007-12-02-11-05-39+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <10712021228.AA23790@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> <4752A817.7000206@t-online.de> <4aca3dc20712021227l666309jf7da5c53e9c68352@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 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/msg00046.txt.bz2 On Sun, 2 Dec 2007, Daniel Berlin wrote: > I have never, in 7 years of working on and debugging gcc, found the > ChangeLog to be useful in debugging a problem. I find they are useful for finding what has changed in function X (or in functions matching pattern Y) since 4.1, say (given a bug in 4.1-based sources that might be fixed by a backport of a more recent patch, which has been traced to involve function X in some way). The key feature here of course is not that the logs do not contain "why", but that they do contain the names of all the functions changed (beyond purely mechanical "all callers changed" type changes) - and the function names can be stable even as the functions themselves move between source files. I think that part of the standards remains useful with logs with the more detailed "why" as used in the gcc/ada/ directory. -- Joseph S. Myers joseph@codesourcery.com