Re: Using the vcs_to_changelog.py script

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>]

> From: Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca>
> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 18:32:51 -0500
> 
> As you may or may not know, the glibc project has started using a script called
> vcs_to_changelog.py to automatically generate their ChangeLogs.  They don't do
> hand-written ChangeLog entries with their contributions.  Instead they generate
> a ChangeLog file using that script when creating a release, passing it a range
> of git commits for which to create ChangeLog entries.
> 
> I would very much like if we started using this in GDB, and it was suggested
> that we could try to sync with binutils, as you might want to do the same.
> 
> Here's how it could work in practice:
> 
> 1. We update our gnulib import to import the vcs_to_changelog.py script (it is
>    distributed as a gnulib module).
> 2. We update src-release.sh to call the script and generate a single top-level
>    ChangeLog that is included in the release tarball.

Several things we'd need to consider if we go this way:

 . AFAIK, the script you mention currently supports only C sources;
   we'd need to see how well it supports C++
 . Some files in our tree are neither C++ nor C: there are Python
   files, Guile files, shell scripts, and Texinfo files, to mention
   just a few: what to do about them?
 . Last, but not least: we'd need detailed instructions for how to
   produce the commit log messages under this regime, because the old
   conventions will not be valid anymore.