Re: time to retire ChangeLog?

[Daniel J. <dan...@gm...>]

Hi,

I think a changelog is a very useful thing to have, but I always felt that
the one of CLISP is by far too detailed.

Perhaps this [1] could give an inspiration how to keep a changelog that
only contains "important" changes. The "full detailed list of changes"
would then be maintained through commit messages.

Best,
Daniel

(Yes I'm still here, though only reading. Long story short, I'm basically
ill since last October and thus have barely time for anything)

[1] http://keepachangelog.com/en/0.3.0/

Bruno Haible <br...@cl...> schrieb am Do., 23. Feb. 2017, 01:16:

> Hi Sam,
>
> > ChangeLog is obsolete. Even Emacs does not use it anymore.
>
> Different groups of developers make different choices.
>
> > While I see obvious benefits
>
> The not so obvious benefits are:
>
>   - We can really keep track of the history over long periods of time.
>     Whereas when we rely on a VCS, we lose info at each move to a different
>     location. (Like the gmane.org article URLs became obsolete six months
> ago.)
>     In the recent move of libffcall from cvs to git we did not lose info,
>     but it cost me two days of work to achieve this result.
>
>   - You get educated to review your changes before committing them.
>
>   - You can access a ChangeLog without any tools, just with a text editor.
>
> > for me the main drawback is that it
> > dramatically increases the probability of conflicts.
>
> 1) There is a tool for automatically resolving these conflicts:
>
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=blob;f=lib/git-merge-changelog.c
> You find the installation instructions at lines 42..48, 77..88 of this
> file.
>
> 2) Even without it, yes there would be conflicts, but they are easy to
> resolve,
> since you remember what you have added. Conflicts are only difficult to
> resolve
> if you don't remember what were your changes versus what were the other
> person's
> changes.
>
> > If I make a local commit and do not push it right away, it is almost
> > certain that I will have to go through either merge or strip/recommit
> > because rebase will definitely fail.
>
> It is not the intent of ChangeLog that you feel the need to push
> immediately. Just keep the same patience as before.
>
> In all projects I work in (from gnulib to libffcall), I find ChangeLogs
> useful.
> In projects without ChangeLog (e.g. XFree86), I found it hard to work.
>
> I admit that in projects with many branches and merges (like the github
> workflow)
> ChangeLogs are not appropriate. But clisp is not in this situation.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> _______________________________________________
> clisp-devel mailing list
> cli...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/clisp-devel
>