On Sun, 2007-09-16 at 00:13 +0200, Jaap Haitsma wrote: > Hi > > Talking to Daniel "Cheese" Siegel we asked ourselves: > Why do all GNOME projects have a ChangeLog file? > Isn't it redundant when you just save a commit message.
More than anything else, I use the ChangeLog file to prepare the NEWS entry for a release. The modules I maintain tend to have numerous ChangeLog files, and I need to look at all of them. gnome-devel-docs 10 ChangeLogs gnome-user-docs 7 ChangeLogs gnome-doc-utils 4 ChangeLogs yelp 2 ChangeLogs Back in the days of CVS, I'd do something like this: cvs diff -rLAST_RELEASE `find . -name ChangeLog` SVN, on the other hand, makes this stupidly difficult. If we were to use commit logs instead, I'd have done this with CVS: cvs log -rLAST_RELEASE:: With SVN, I'd have to figure out which revision on trunk the LAST_RELEASE "tag" was copied from. Then it's more or less the same command. With git, it's simple as well. I could, in principle, prepare my NEWS entry from git log. But the messages would no longer be grouped as they are with separate ChangeLog files. What's more, it seems most git users don't prefix their commit messages with the affected files. So I'd end up seeing a commit message like Updated the Spanish translation As I'm preparing the NEWS entry for gnome-devel-docs, do I record an updated Spanish translation of the HIG, the Platform Overview, the Integration Guide, the GDP Handbook, or the GDP Style Guide? I just don't know. I recognize that ChangeLogs cause annoying conflicts when merging, and I'd be more than happy to do away with them. But preparing NEWS entries was already a pain in the ass, and SVN made it worse. I think I'd just give up if it got more annoying. -- Shaun _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list