On Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:19:41 +0100 Colomban Wendling lists.ban@herbesfolles.org wrote:
While importing a new plugin into Geany-Plugins' autotools build system, I noticed that having a ChangeLog is mandatory. Since I have some griefs against version-controlled ChangeLogs, I'll try to expose the problems, and some possible solutions.
[...]
Well. I'll stop here for now, and simply ask the question: "Do we really want to have ChangeLogs in Geany-Plugins' repository?".
For me, a ChangeLog describes what happened, and the VCS messages how exactly it happened. For example, ChangeLog "files: fixed load_vte/vc usage and made vc non-pointer to forbid any vc != NULL checks", while the real changes may consist of three commits, none of which makes it clear why such changes took place. Some people, Adrian for example, prefer to commit in very small portions; an autogenerated ChangeLog of the treebrowser will be quite tedious.
I do agree that lacking a ChangeLog improves the commit messages, but in the above vte/vc example, the goal of the changes would have to be repeated in each message.
Auto generation will work if we approve a policy that only full sets of changes should be commited, so "what happened" equals to "how it happened".
The NEWS file should cover new things, such as "The former hidden preferences can now be edited in Editor -> Preferences -> Various".
In my company, too, the commit messages are not a substitution for the project documentation, which explains what changes were made since the last stable and why.