Re: Using VC for change descriptions

[Richard Stallman]

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  > Also: entity names are very unhelpful in some cases.  Consider the 
  > following fragments from a ChangeLog entry for changes to glibc's 
  > math/Makefile:

  >         ($(addprefix $(objpfx), $(libm-tests.o))): Move target and update
  >         dependencies.
  >         ($(foreach t,$(libm-tests-normal),$(objpfx)$(t).c)): New rule.
  >         ($(foreach t,$(libm-tests-finite),$(objpfx)$(t).c)): Likewise.
  >         ($(foreach t,$(libm-tests-inline),$(objpfx)$(t).c)): Likewise.
  >         ($(foreach t,$(libm-tests-vector),$(objpfx)$(t).c)): Likewise.
  >         ($(foreach t,$(types),$(objpfx)libm-test-support-$(t).c)):
  >         Likewise.
  >         (dependencies on libm-test-support-*.o): Remove.
  >         ($(foreach f,$(libm-test-funcs-all),$(objpfx)$(o)-$(f).o)): New
  >         rules using iterators.
  >         ($(addprefix $(objpfx),$(call libm-tests-for-type,$(o)))):
  >         Likewise.
  >         ($(objpfx)libm-test-support-$(o).o): Likewise.
  >         ($(addprefix $(objpfx),$(filter-out $(tests-static)
  >         $(libm-vec-tests),$(tests)))): Filter out $(libm-tests-vector)
  >         instead.
  >         ($(addprefix $(objpfx), $(libm-vec-tests))): Use iterator to
  >         define rule instead.

Indeed, that is cumbersome.  Let's look at some alternatives to see
what would be best.

  > There are four paragraphs of human-level explanation of that change as a 
  > whole in the commit message (glibc commit 
  > 92061bb033f093cca76e31745cac14c43a1fb29b, "Run libm tests separately for 
  > each function.").

I don't know what text is to be found there -- it is too inconvenient
for me to look.  Are you talking about the text quoted above, or some
other text?  Would you please show us?

  > I don't think the 370-line ChangeLog entry adds 
  > anything useful

Maybe it doesn't, but could you show me what it says?

Also, what would you suggest writing instead?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.