Re: Abolishing ChangeLog files (was: On the subject of Git, Bazaar, and the future of Emacs development)

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Christopher.

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 09:55:29AM +0000, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> David Engster <address@hidden> writes:
> > The most time consuming thing is fixing ChangeLogs (we don't have any
> > in CEDET and generate them from commit logs).

> I would like to suggest another change - how about removing ChangeLog
> files from the development repository.  I think these files are
> redundant to the commit log of the vc.

> Removing the files from the repository would clean diffs and reduce
> merge conflicts.  Considering distributed vc, a project's history cannot
> be thought of as to be list of consecutive increments.

> Distributions of Emacs could include ChangeLog files generated from the
> vc commit log, of course.

Of course?  Generating the (structured) ChangeLog from (free form) log
entrys isn't trivial.

> Do I make sense?  Are there any drawbacks?

Yes.  ChangeLog files are useful, e.g. for hunting down changes.  I do
this often enough that the lack of ChangeLogs would be inconvenient.  I
don't doubt that it's possible to wring the necessary info out of bzr,
I've done it, but it's not pleasant.

Anyway, whilst the choice of DVCS is up in the air is not the time to be
debating this question, IMAO.

>         Christopher

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).