Re: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs?

[Richard Stallman]

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  > It is true that some hackers write good commit messages *and*
  > ChangeLogs, but I'm under the impression that most people just write the
  > changelog and consider that their job is done (after all, current policy
  > for commit messages is to write a summary line and the 

There must be some misunderstanding.  Nowadays, in Emacs, there is
only one log entry.  It is supposed to contain an overall summary,
followed by the details of which entities were changed and how.

  > Absolutely agreed. That's about putting each piece where it belongs.
  > Some times, however, the code is not the best place to put some
  > explanation (think of an scattered change or why some alternative that,
  > at first, seems more adequate was discarded) and the commit message
  > offers an alternative.

When I wanted to put an explanation in comments in the code,
I could always find a natural place to put it.

  > > There was no such thing as a commit message in 1985.

  > Exactly. I'm pretty sure that if you had a good VCS at that time
  > ChangeLogs would never came into being.

We can't tell what _would have_ happened, but all the time I have used
a VCS I still wanted changelogs just as much as ever.


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