ANNOUNCEMENT: ChangeLog policy change after GDB 11

Joel Brobecker brobecker@adacore.com
Sun Jun 13 15:10:51 GMT 2021


Dear all,

Following the feedback received, and after discussion within
the group of GDB Global Maintainers, the following was decided:

  * GDB 11 will be the last release branch using ChangeLog files.

    Please continue providing ChangeLog entries as usual on master
    until we create the branch, and then on the gdb-11-branch.

  * On the master branch, once the gdb-11-branch has been created:

    - Stop requiring ChangeLog entries, neither in a ChangeLog file,
      nor in the commit message;

    - Continue requiring detailed commit messages, which give full
      context about the problem being addressed. The reviewers
      are encouraged to ask contributors to enhnace their commit
      messages if necessary (something we already do, but seems
      worth emphasizing).

    - To be implemented: Devise a mechanism which allows us to include
      in source packages a file with the list of changes made since
      the last release.

      Mostly for the record, one use case that was presented when
      requesting this feature was:

      | When looking at some 3rd party's gdb, to determine which
      | exact upstream GDB version the 3rd party based their version
      | on (so I could diff their local changes.)  Without a dump of
      | the commit logs, we won't have an equivalent standard record
      | for that.

      Exact method to automate the generation of that information
      has not been discussed. Anyone willing to help with that?

    - For patches with multiple authors, we ask that commits with
      multiple authors have a...

          Co-Authored-By: xxx

      ... git-trailer, so that complete author information be kept.

Note that this change of policy only concerns the code maintained
by the GDB project. Remember that the binutils-gdb repository,
as the name suggests, is shared between two projects, and that
this announcement doesn't concern the files maintained by the binutils
community.

We will find the best location to document this change of policy
momentarily.

-- 
Joel


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