From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 6749 invoked by alias); 4 Dec 2007 16:45:05 -0000 Received: (qmail 6737 invoked by uid 22791); 4 Dec 2007 16:45:05 -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 16:44:57 +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 lB4Gitt1005316; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 11:44:55 -0500 Received: from pobox.corp.redhat.com (pobox.corp.redhat.com [10.11.255.20]) by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id lB4Gith8018384; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 11:44:55 -0500 Received: from opsy.redhat.com (ton.yyz.redhat.com [10.15.16.15]) by pobox.corp.redhat.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id lB4GirW6023064; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 11:44:54 -0500 Received: by opsy.redhat.com (Postfix, from userid 500) id 6014E378AFD; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 09:18:10 -0700 (MST) To: Diego Novillo Cc: Samuel Tardieu , gcc@gcc.gnu.org, Daniel Berlin Subject: Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages References: <2007-12-02-11-05-39+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <47543DE8.3010003@google.com> From: Tom Tromey Reply-To: tromey@redhat.com X-Attribution: Tom Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:45:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: <47543DE8.3010003@google.com> (Diego Novillo's message of "Mon\, 03 Dec 2007 12\:33\:28 -0500") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.990 (gnu/linux) 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/msg00106.txt.bz2 >>>>> "Diego" == Diego Novillo writes: Diego> I'm not sure people will want to drop ChangeLogs anytime soon. I Diego> don't find them all that useful, but I *have* used them extensively Diego> when doing archeology. It gives you the initial thread to pull when Diego> finding out about changes. Yeah. They aren't incredibly useful, but they aren't useless, either. One thing they give you that 'svn annotate' does not is a record of when things were deleted. I use them this way on occasion. I have a few concerns about a change in this area. First, continuing to have good quality messages. Right now at the very least you get a (semi-) accurate record of what was touched. I've seen plenty of ChangeLog-less projects out there than end up with commits like "fixed a bug", or even worse. I suppose we'll need to review the commit messages just like we review ChangeLog entries now. That doesn't sound fun, but I suppose it won't be too much work. Second, whether it makes the process heavier: Diego> The only annoying issue with this proposal is that it forces the Diego> committer to fish out the message URL from the mailing lists, so Diego> perhaps we could make the check a warning instead of an error. This would be a big pain. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the mail server added a URL to the header somewhere, so I could wait for the mail to come back and then look it up. The obvious alternative of hitting reload on the gcc web page is unattractive. Also it seems to me that this will make it a bit harder for developers without write access to get their patches checked in ... because it will mean even more work for whoever does the commit. Tom