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([2804:7f0:4841:2841:c502:89bb:c3bf:f9a1]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id p17sm12768120qtx.71.2021.03.17.13.53.13 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 bits=128/128); Wed, 17 Mar 2021 13:53:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: sim: replacing ChangeLog files with online git logs To: Eli Zaretskii Cc: simon.marchi@polymtl.ca, gdb@sourceware.org, vapier@gentoo.org References: <83ft0zjys1.fsf@gnu.org> <83lfarhwjq.fsf@gnu.org> <83eegjhuuq.fsf@gnu.org> <8335wyj461.fsf@gnu.org> <83tup9disi.fsf@gnu.org> <2012fb21-38f2-3d1c-62c8-52d94d19e243@linaro.org> <83pmzxdegd.fsf@gnu.org> <83o8fhddg3.fsf@gnu.org> <18f4f0e2-0a35-a6c5-1886-943f81f817fd@linaro.org> <83mtv1dbzr.fsf@gnu.org> <83im5pdao2.fsf@gnu.org> <83ft0td5ve.fsf@gnu.org> From: Luis Machado Message-ID: <1f8b7494-0c23-14ed-0096-ad0768663f1a@linaro.org> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2021 17:53:12 -0300 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.7.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <83ft0td5ve.fsf@gnu.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, score=-5.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, DKIM_SIGNED, DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU, DKIM_VALID_EF, NICE_REPLY_A, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE, SPF_HELO_NONE, SPF_PASS, TXREP autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on server2.sourceware.org X-BeenThere: gdb@sourceware.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: Gdb mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2021 20:53:18 -0000 On 3/17/21 2:53 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> Cc: gdb@sourceware.org, Mike Frysinger >> From: Luis Machado >> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2021 14:24:27 -0300 >> >>> Well, if that's what the majority here wants, then so be it. >> >> That's what we should assess. From chatting with other active GDB >> developers, my feeling is that most of us want to drop the process of >> having to write ChangeLog entries manually. But we tend to keep quiet >> and carry on doing it. > > I didn't start this discussion, mind you. > I know. But this has been bothering contributors for a few years now. I don't want to hijack the sim/ChangeLog thread, but it feels important to improve this situation in some way. Given sim/ is under GDB's umbrella, might as well consider the whole project in my opinion. >>> (The importance of having the list of modified symbols in the log is >>> that then one doesn't need advanced Git commands to find out which >>> changes modified a given function and why.) >>> >> >> I understand the concern about git. I used to find git a bit too cryptic >> too, but using it daily has made that better. >> >> Now git log/git blame shows very useful information when I'm looking for >> specific changes from a commit, and I rarely need to go through >> ChangeLogs other than to find commits that touched a particular >> function/variable. > > IME "git log" and "git blame" have shortcomings when used for > forensics, and having a ChangeLog-style list of changes helps overcome > that in many important use cases. > Right. That's true. Both have their pros and cons. But the git commands, IMO, demand no extra time from developers. ChangeLog's, on the other hand, do. A contributor's time spent on the project is a limited and valuable resource. Making the best use of that resource is important. >>>> I tried vcs-to-changelog, it gave horrible/useless results with our >>>> codebase. This is not an option. >>> >>> Too bad. Maybe we should report this to the developer of the script, >>> it could help fix those shortcomings in the future. >>> >> >> Maybe. But looking into the future, parsing C++ to extract that kind of >> information is really not trivial. So it may never work in a reasonable >> way for GDB without some serious effort put into the script. > > We don't need it to do a perfect job, only a reasonable one. A 80% > success is a very big step forward wrt not having the information at > all. > Sounds reasonable. But for contributors not seeing value in ChangeLog entries, it is hard to justify putting effort/time into such a script. But I agree it would be nice to have improvements to a script/tool like that. It might make sense for someone who sees value in such data to invest some time improving its generation.