[Geany-devel] ChangeLog for Geany: is that useful, for who and how? (was Re: Geany-Plugins: Please check for ChangeLog-entries on commit)

[Jiří Techet]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 18:33, Colomban Wendling
<lists.ban at herbesfolles.org> wrote:
> Le 19/09/2011 17:55, Frank Lanitz a écrit :
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:45:04 +0200
>> Colomban Wendling <lists.ban at herbesfolles.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Le 19/09/2011 08:15, Frank Lanitz a écrit :
>>>> Hi folks,
>>>>
>>>> Another episode from topic improving plugins by Frank ;)
>>>>
>>>> In last time I saw a lot of changes going in into plugins without
>>>> having a ChageLog entry set.
>>>>
>>>> Its not always useful in every case but its a nice thing for users
>>>> of trunk and also stable releases to have a middle view between
>>>> NEWS-file which is in most cases only a very short compilation of
>>>> changes and the very, very verbose svn/git log view. So I'm bagging
>>>> you to have in mind updating your ChangeLog and when every updating
>>>> po-files or something else inside
>>>> geany-plugins/trunk/geany-plugins/po I make it mandatory ;)
>>>
>>> Oh no, I planned to start (again [1]) a discussion about *removing*
>>> ChangeLog committing :D  (OK, I though about Geany itself, not GP)
>>>
>>> I'll start it right now then, if you don't mind.
>>
>> I'm open to start a discussion about ChangeLog for post svn times as
>> with correct merging its really not much of a benefit (even there are
>> some).
>>
>> BUT: As we are currently on svn and build system for geany-plugins is
>> expecting a ChangeLog I disagree to do this discussion for 0.21 release
>> of plugins. So discussion is having no impact onto upcoming release :)
>
> Agreed, I should have made clear I was speaking about post-0.21.  It
> would be stupid anyway to change any policy less than one month before a
> release IMHO.

I definitely agree manual updating ChangeLog files isn't worth the
effort (moreover, it's a really boring work). So I agree they should
be generated automatically after the git switch. The recommended way
for Gnome programs and libraries is here:

http://live.gnome.org/Git/ChangeLog

I've also never read the ChangeLog file apart from noticing the
changes when browsing through VCS history. A side effect of not
updating the ChangeLog file is that it will make the history cleaner
too.

Cheers,

Jiri