Re: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Sun, 06 Mar 2016 13:52:04 -0800 John Wiegley <address@hidden> wrote: 

JW> I'd like to open this up to discussion on emacs-devel, so that we hear from
JW> our other developers. What do you all think about ChangeLogs, and their 
value
JW> to you in your work on Emacs?

Currently, I think ChangeLogs are a barrier to contribution. The vast
majority of other software projects don't use them.

But Emacs doesn't have a pull request contribution system, which makes
it hard to review things before they go in, so contributors must know
and follow the right format at all times. It's a pain.

So I would suggest moving to a pull request system, where code review
from a second contributor is required to merge any non-trivial code
(exceptions should be granted based on years contributing to Emacs).
That also gives *everyone* the opportunity to comment on the code before
it's merged, instead of post-facto. Clearly services such as Github and
BitBucket and many others have been offering this functionality for a
while with good results.

A big advantage of pull requests is that they can group commits, so each
commit doesn't need the level of detail it does today, and so the
evolution of the work is visible to a reviewer.

Then ChangeLogs become simply documentation for the merged code,
together with actual docs and other notes that are needed. The pull
request system can later provide *everything* that a ChangeLog could,
and more (such as better searching and cross-referencing) so in the long
term the ChangeLog can go away.

Ted