Re: Automating the maintenance of the ChangeLog file

[Zack Weinberg <zackw at panix dot com>]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 10:44 AM Gabriel F. T. Gomes
<gabriel@inconstante.eti.br> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Nov 2018, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>
> >Specifically, I propose:  Effective immediately, project policy
> >requires the Git commit message for each commit to end with the full
> >text of a traditional ChangeLog entry for that commit.  Most everyone
> >is already doing this most of the time, so the policy change just
> >upgrades it to a requirement.
>
> I only add a ChangeLog entry to the commit message because every commit
> needs one, and our project policy states that submitted patches should not
> include changes to the ChangeLog file in the diff itself, but before the
> diff (see the second paragraph of section 12 in the contribution
> checklist [1]).  So, maybe this is already a requirement?

Not quite: I think we would need to update the _committer_ checklist
(https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Committer%20checklist) to state
that the changelog text must be included in the commit message.

Glancing at "git log" output, it appears to me that some committers
(e.g. Joseph, H.J) always do this and some (e.g. Florian, Andreas)
don't.

> On the other hand, what I would like to see removed, instead, is the
> requirement to write a ChangeLog entry, in the first place.

This is the discussion that I specifically _don't_ want to have in
this thread, because it involves a GNU-level policy change that I fear
may never actually happen, and I do not want that to block process
improvements that don't technically depend on it.  See my reply to
Szabolcs for why I think not having to update the ChangeLog _file_ on
each commit is a valuable process improvement in itself.

zw