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Re: Stop updating ChangeLog?
- From: Andrew Burgess <andrew dot burgess at embecosm dot com>
- To: John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd dot org>
- Cc: gdb-patches at sourceware dot org
- Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2018 19:44:05 +0000
- Subject: Re: Stop updating ChangeLog?
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <CAH=s-PMDK233mPHHecHbrRky3QyaWYLem8KyujWm+E6M+N1WOQ@mail.gmail.com> <2329026.M5dy4NNrbC@ralph.baldwin.cx>
* John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> [2018-02-05 11:07:16 -0800]:
> On Monday, February 05, 2018 04:00:36 PM Yao Qi wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > The discussion in this thread
> > https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2018-02/msg00012.html
> > leads to a discussion that whether we still need ChangeLog. I start
> > a new thread to get more attention on this topic.
> >
> > In current development, we need to write one ore more changelog
> > entries for each commit, put them into both git commit log and
> > ChangeLog files. How much we can change to existing mode
> > depends the answers to these following questions,
> >
> > #1 Are ChangeLog files useful in GDB releases to various people
> > who build GDB releases?
> > #2 Are ChangeLog files useful in GDB repo to various GDB
> > developers?
> >
> > a) If answers are Yes/Yes, we keep unchanged,
> > b) If answers are No/No, we don't need to write changelog entries in
> > git commit log, nor updating ChangeLog file,
> > c) If answer are Yes/No, developers still have to write changelog
> > entries in git commit log, and we can generate ChangeLog on
> > release from git log.
> > d) If answers are No/Yes, get use to git to get the information from
> > git log instead of ChangeLog,
> >
> > My answers are No/No, so I suggest that we do b). I can live up with
> > c), but that needs change in the release process. What do you think?
>
> I probably have a bit of a biased view as most of my development work is done
> without ChangeLogs, so I'm used to just using web interfaces (svnweb, gitweb)
> or vc-annotate in Emacs or the like (git log -S is also super helpful) when
> examining history. I also find the contents of a ChangeLog as I currently
> understand it to be a description of the diff (but not the "why"), so I find
> it to be redundant with 'git diff' rather than providing new information (as
> opposed to the "why" we currently include in commit messages). That probably
> puts me in the No/No camp.
>
> c) would save some work on having to always do 'rebase -i' passes to fixup
> dates in the ChangeLog files before pushing an approved series. (I use
> git-merge-changelog which at last moves the added entries to the top, but I
> still have to go fixup all the dates by hand.)
You might find this useful:
https://github.com/T-J-Teru/dotfiles/blob/master/home/bin/git-update-changelogs
Where previously you would do:
git rebase -i BASE-COMMIT
# Edit each commit to update the date by hand...
You can now just do:
git update-changelogs BASE-COMMIT
And you're done.
Enjoy!
Thanks,
Andrew