Hi! On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 10:01:20PM +0200, Martin Jambor wrote: > On Fri, Apr 24 2020, Segher Boessenkool wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 05:48:38PM +0200, Thomas Koenig wrote: > >> >Of course, better would be to remove ChangeLogs entirely (including not > >> >putting anything like them into a commit message), because they are > >> >largely not useful and are just make-work. > >> > >> I disagree. I find them quite useful. > > > > For what? And, can that be provided some other way? > > I often have a look at them when reviewing a patch.
I *always* do that (approving a patch is also approving the proposed changelog for it, so :-) ) > It is great when > they clearly indicate whether a change is some form of restructuring or > a functional change and broadly speaking what it is. Then I just know > what to look for. Yeah... Ideally, you can just read the whole patch message *in order*: first the subject (before you see anything else; this is where you decide you need some more coffee first). Then, the commit message, which should tell you everything you need to know about what the patch accomplishes. Then, the changelog, which tells you all that the patch changes (which is also really handy when this does not match up 100% with what the patch does!) And finally, the patch itself. > I also find writing them useful as it forces me to go through every > patch one last time before submitting it :-) If you spend some time > configuring your text editor and git, the boilerplate stuff can be > generated automatically. One good trick is realising that if your patch series isn't structured well, writing the changelogs is much harder. This can very often be applied the other way: if you construct your patch series so that the changelogs are simple to write (i.e. boring), your patch series becomes much stronger, and much easier to understand. Only one theme per patch; if you need to restructure some existing code, do that *first*, in a *separate* patch; that kind of thing. > I do not think this can be provided in any other way that would not > resemble a ChangeLog. I do support the effort to put them into commit > messages only though (and then perhaps generate the files from that). I think if people make better patch series (small patches are *good*!), and better commit messages, changelogs will have much less value than they do today. But until people do that, dropping changelogs will be a real loss. Segher
