Re: ChangeLogs in commit messages

[Doug Evans <dje@google.com>]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 3:29 AM, Gary Benson <gbenson@redhat.com> wrote:
> Joel Brobecker wrote:
>> > > E.g., I suspect this patch:
>> > >
>> > >   https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2014-08/msg00650.html
>> > >
>> > > will end up with both Gary's and Tom's name in the ChangeLog,
>> > > but that's really just a guess.
>> > >
>> > > This makes it impossible for someone else to push the patch
>> > > other than the submitter, because not all the info is there.
>> > >
>> > > It's a bigger issue even if someone posts a patch written or
>> > > co-written by someone that might not have copyright
>> > > assignment in place.
>> > >
>> > > I think author info must be explicit in patch submissions
>> > > somehow.
>>
>> That's probably the strongest argument in favor of putting
>> the full ChangeLog entry in the revision log. I'm just having
>> a hard time accepting the fact that we going to include a date
>> in the revision log which could be wrong because added by hand.
>> And once it's pushed, there is no going back, so no way to fix it.
>>
>> Recognizing the fact that the majority of patches have one single
>> author who is also the submitter, perhaps we could use the no-date/
>> no-author format for those cases, and provide a way to specify
>> for those few times where necessary? Seems complicated, perhaps...
>
> Optional authors lines below "path/to/ChangeLog:"?
>
>   Introduce target/target.h
>
>   This introduces target/target.h.  This file declares some functions
>   that the shared code can use and that clients must implement.  It
>   also changes some shared code to use these functions.
>
>   gdb/ChangeLog:
>     Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>
>     Gary Benson <gbenson@redhat.com>
>
>           * target/target.h: New file.
>           * Makefile.in (HFILES_NO_SRCDIR): Add target/target.h.
>           * target.h: Include target/target.h.
>           ...
>
>   gdb/gdbserver/ChangeLog:
>     Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>
>     Gary Benson <gbenson@redhat.com>
>
>           * target.h: Include target/target.h.
>           * target.c (target_read_memory, target_read_uint32)
>           ...
>
> In terms of parsing, the "/ChangeLog:" marks the start of a ChangeLog
> entry, and the blank line marks the end of any optional authors lines.
> If no authors lines are present then the committer is the author.

There's still something missing (IIUC).
One of the problems that needs to be solved is documenting the author
in the patch submission (the email that goes to the list).  The above
convention allows for a default where the absence of a name means
author == committer, but we're still not specifying an absolute
requirement that the patch author appears in the email sent to the
list.
Am I missing something?