From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 20766 invoked by alias); 5 Feb 2018 19:08:18 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 20720 invoked by uid 89); 5 Feb 2018 19:08:17 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Virus-Found: No X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SPF_HELO_PASS,SPF_SOFTFAIL autolearn=no version=3.3.2 spammy=camp, examining, super X-Spam-User: qpsmtpd, 2 recipients X-HELO: mail.baldwin.cx Received: from bigwig.baldwin.cx (HELO mail.baldwin.cx) (96.47.65.170) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with ESMTP; Mon, 05 Feb 2018 19:08:14 +0000 Received: from ralph.baldwin.cx (ralph.baldwin.cx [66.234.199.215]) by mail.baldwin.cx (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id C396C10A8BE; Mon, 5 Feb 2018 14:08:12 -0500 (EST) From: John Baldwin To: gdb-patches@sourceware.org Cc: Yao Qi , GDB Subject: Re: Stop updating ChangeLog? Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2018 19:08:00 -0000 Message-ID: <2329026.M5dy4NNrbC@ralph.baldwin.cx> User-Agent: KMail/4.14.10 (FreeBSD/11.1-STABLE; KDE/4.14.30; amd64; ; ) In-Reply-To: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-IsSubscribed: yes X-SW-Source: 2018-02/txt/msg00073.txt.bz2 On Monday, February 05, 2018 04:00:36 PM Yao Qi wrote: > Hi all, > The discussion in this thread > https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2018-02/msg00012.html > leads to a discussion that whether we still need ChangeLog. I start > a new thread to get more attention on this topic. > > In current development, we need to write one ore more changelog > entries for each commit, put them into both git commit log and > ChangeLog files. How much we can change to existing mode > depends the answers to these following questions, > > #1 Are ChangeLog files useful in GDB releases to various people > who build GDB releases? > #2 Are ChangeLog files useful in GDB repo to various GDB > developers? > > a) If answers are Yes/Yes, we keep unchanged, > b) If answers are No/No, we don't need to write changelog entries in > git commit log, nor updating ChangeLog file, > c) If answer are Yes/No, developers still have to write changelog > entries in git commit log, and we can generate ChangeLog on > release from git log. > d) If answers are No/Yes, get use to git to get the information from > git log instead of ChangeLog, > > My answers are No/No, so I suggest that we do b). I can live up with > c), but that needs change in the release process. What do you think? I probably have a bit of a biased view as most of my development work is done without ChangeLogs, so I'm used to just using web interfaces (svnweb, gitweb) or vc-annotate in Emacs or the like (git log -S is also super helpful) when examining history. I also find the contents of a ChangeLog as I currently understand it to be a description of the diff (but not the "why"), so I find it to be redundant with 'git diff' rather than providing new information (as opposed to the "why" we currently include in commit messages). That probably puts me in the No/No camp. c) would save some work on having to always do 'rebase -i' passes to fixup dates in the ChangeLog files before pushing an approved series. (I use git-merge-changelog which at last moves the added entries to the top, but I still have to go fixup all the dates by hand.) b) would eliminate a fair bit of bookkeeping work in my GDB time as Simon has noted. -- John Baldwin