Re: master 5022e27: ; Do not overwrite preexisting contents of unread-command-events

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: David Kastrup <address@hidden>
>> Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2015 10:33:17 +0200
>> Cc: address@hidden
>> 
>> > What do you propose I do now?
>> 
>> That question was not rhetorical.
>
> It's unclear to me what exactly were you asking.  If the question is
> how to fix that single ChangeLog entry, then the answer is: wait for
> the update to ChangeLog.2 to be committed (happens once a week, I
> think), and then manually correct (add in your case) the problematic
> entry, and commit the result.

Well, the question is just what this entry should entail.  Every changed
function and file?  That will be a rather large entry.

Apart from that I don't think I need to "wait for the update to
ChangeLog.2" since the complaint was that the log message was formatted
in a way where it would not even cause an entry to ChangeLog.2.  So it
doesn't really seem to matter all that much just when I'll update
ChangeLog.2 manually.

> If you are asking about future log entries, then here's what I do: I
> keep a local ChangeLog file, which is unversioned.  I use the normal
> "C-x 4 a" command to write a ChangeLog entry, and then I copy it to
> the log message when I commit the changeset.

After unindenting and reformatting, yeah.  Which is a total crutch.  But
it's not like I haven't done it for years just like that.  I just
pointed out that this will lead to a very large ChangeLog entry here.

> If the question is how to format the log entry for the particular
> changeset you committed in 5022e27dac4c13651941e425dbec5b3a2cecdae4,
> then after looking through it I see no problem to just mention every
> function where you made the changes.  It sounds like most of them
> replace setq with a push, or do similar minor changes, which is fine
> to mention in the log entry.

Well, the changes are mostly of the "similar minor change" kind, namely
not completely obeying the same description.

The main problem I have is that the invested work and the resulting
space in the ChangeLog is not going to save anybody any time or effort
since we are not talking about a feature here or normally user-visible
changes in semantics.  And it's not particular to any package/feature
either.  It's not the kind of change we are maintaining a ChangeLog file
separate from commit messages for.

I can invest the time necessary for creating this dump half-manually if
desired.  I just have a trouble figuring out any reason why it would be
desired.  If we had an automated way of creating such a change log entry
generating commit message, it would waste less of the _writer's_ time.
But I can't help the feeling that in this case I'm also only wasting
_readers'_ time.

The reason I made that simple commit message really wasn't "oh, I'm too
lazy to do a proper one" but rather "this would not even make sense".
Obviously other developers disagree after the fact so I'll "fix" it.  I
just have a hard time doing a fix that does not feel like making the
situation worse than it is already.

-- 
David Kastrup