[Geany-devel] Geany-Plugins & ChangeLogs

[Dimitar Zhekov]

On Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:19:41 +0100
Colomban Wendling <lists.ban at 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.

-- 
E-gards: Jimmy