Re: Generating ChangeLog files.

[Bozhidar Batsov]

On 3 January 2014 12:12, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:

> From: Rüdiger Sonderfeld <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2014 10:31:39 +0100
> Cc: Michael Albinus <address@hidden>,
>       Thierry Volpiatto <address@hidden>

>
> I usually write patches on a branch and rebase them when they are ready to be
> pushed.  This always causes merge conflicts for the ChangeLog.  (Maybe [1]
> could help a bit.)

There should be no merge conflicts with ChangeLog files.  I see an
absolute zero of them.  git-merge-changelog and the changelog_merge
plugin in bzr make this not an issue.

> E.g., GNU Octave replaced ChangeLog with an auto-generated ChangeLog from
> commit messages and they seem to be quite happy with that solution.

I've seen a couple of projects that eliminated ChangeLogs.  In every
single case, the result was a drastic deterioration in the quality of
the commit log information.

I work on a lot of open-source projects and most them have changelogs listing only non-trivial changes (as opposed to what

we do in Emacs - listing everything). While I definitely think a changelog is usefu,l I don't think it's particularly 

good idea to simply copy the commit messages in the changelog (or vice versa). IMO the changelog should

strike some middle ground between the NEWS and the commit log. As it stands now - it's mostly a duplication of

the commit log, so I rarely refer to it.

 

> I know the topic has been discussed several times and it seems a bit pointless
> to start the discussion again.  But in my opinion ChangeLogs are an even
> bigger issue than the VC because at least I can work around the latter by
> using git-bzr.

As pointed out above, you should be able to resolve the former as
well, in no time.