Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
On 30 October 2014 09:55, Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK) wrote: >> Great. But people don't *want* to adhere to the GNU style, > > Do not want to adhere to the GNU style or do they not want to bother > with creating the files? There is a very important difference in > motivation: People from the first group get what they want with foreign > style. People from the latter group however would be happy to use GNU > style, if it did not create additional work for them. The problem is that it does, given that GNU style is not the presence of those four files or not, but also involves the portability warnings and further limitations designed for the GNU project, that they most likely won't care about. I get it, you want to get them to see the Light of GNU. But I'm not there to indoctrinate on the style of ChangeLog people need to use, I'm there to get people a working build system that does not drive packagers crazy. > This change is for the latter group, since the former group can already > switch to foreign style by just adding a single parameter. Thus why I'm saying I don't care. If you want to do that for the GNU people I don't care, I just think it's a false assumption that people won't be complaining about another of the GNU style rules at some point. > Autogenerating the AUTHORS and ChangeLog would reduce this to a single > 0-sized file, because nowadays most people understand that a README is > important -- I think the same will happen for the NEWS file, once code > hosting platforms start using the NEWS file as source to provide > human-readable news about projects. Then this would eliminate the > 0-sized files. Err, no. I mean no really. Autogenerating them may help sure, but I don't think "people understand a README is important" — people get *forced* to understand a README is needed, but for instance I wouldn't use gnu style anyway because I call my file README.md so that GitHub at least *renders* it correctly. So yeah, I still expect 0-sized files all around. > Note: Here you note that autotools need COPYING, > but this is created automatically nowadays. > You only need to provide it if you don’t want to use the GPL. Which once again I'm not assuming people do. Because I've seen packages in which the README and the source says MIT, but then they got a default GPL COPYING in there. Which is bad, and I hope I don't have to explain to you how and why. Again, carry on, it can't make things worse but I'll still suggest people to stay away from gnu style unless they are part of the GNU project. Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
On 30 October 2014 06:45, Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK) wrote: > Am 30.10.2014 00:43, schrieb Diego Elio Pettenò: > I don’t want to change the GNU style. I want to have an easier way to > *adhere to* the existing GNU style by providing default tool support for > creating the ChangeLog and AUTHORS file from versiontracking systems. Great. But people don't *want* to adhere to the GNU style, most people just end up creating 0-sized AUTHORS NEWS and ChangeLog files, because otherwise automake fails, and then they complain about autotools being messy and requiring useless boilerplate. > Additional motivation for this: If I want to teach someone to switch > from a simple Makefile to autotools, I have to talk about https://autotools.io/whosafraid.html For 90% of the non-library projects out there this will cover enough that is needed to start. > As you can see, how to write a conforming ChangeLog takes roughly as > much explanation as writing the configure.ac. And every new contributor > will have to learn how to do that (while the other topics are only > needed for the initial setup or for the maintainer). So here is the usual disagreement. I don't like GNU style and I think that imposing it and wasting people's time on it is not worth it at all. Again I don't have stakes on the gnu style because I don't use it. I don't want to use it. And I don't want to force anybody else to use it. I usually make people happy when I tell them you can use automake in foreign mode because then there is no 0-sized top-level file there just to make it happy. Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
Am 30.10.2014 10:15, schrieb Diego Elio Pettenò: > On 30 October 2014 06:45, Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK) > wrote: >> Am 30.10.2014 00:43, schrieb Diego Elio Pettenò: >> I don’t want to change the GNU style. I want to have an easier way to >> *adhere to* the existing GNU style by providing default tool support for >> creating the ChangeLog and AUTHORS file from versiontracking systems. > > Great. But people don't *want* to adhere to the GNU style, Do not want to adhere to the GNU style or do they not want to bother with creating the files? There is a very important difference in motivation: People from the first group get what they want with foreign style. People from the latter group however would be happy to use GNU style, if it did not create additional work for them. This change is for the latter group, since the former group can already switch to foreign style by just adding a single parameter. > most people > just end up creating 0-sized AUTHORS NEWS and ChangeLog files, because > otherwise automake fails, and then they complain about autotools being > messy and requiring useless boilerplate. Autogenerating the AUTHORS and ChangeLog would reduce this to a single 0-sized file, because nowadays most people understand that a README is important -- I think the same will happen for the NEWS file, once code hosting platforms start using the NEWS file as source to provide human-readable news about projects. Then this would eliminate the 0-sized files. Best wishes, Arne PS: I know your autotools mythbuster: It helped me a lot in adding distcheck-support for my projects. Example: https://bitbucket.org/ArneBab/wisp/src/6cf3f78205bec638f9eb8aba7344946e70bfd0e1/Makefile.am Sadly much of my own autotools work also involved cargo-culting. Note: Here you note that autotools need COPYING, but this is created automatically nowadays. You only need to provide it if you don’t want to use the GPL. - https://autotools.io/automake/options.html -- Doktorand Gruppe: GHG Raum: 435/410 Tel.: +49 721 608-22885 arne.babenhauserhe...@kit.edu Karlsruher Institut für Technologie IMK-ASF Postfach 36 40 76021 Karlsruhe 0xA70DA09E.asc Description: application/pgp-keys <> signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
