On Friday 21 October 2011, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Fri, 21 Oct 2011, Stefano Lattarini wrote: > >> > >> Should I perhaps file a bug that the ChangeLog file should be generated? > >> > > That would be a good idea in the long(ish) term. In fact, I pesonally see > > ChangeLogs as a relic of the pre-VCS era; they were surely VERY useful to > > track regressions and bugs and backward-incompatibilites back then, but > > today that we have the "real" project history in the VCS repo, and lots of > > tools to view and analyze it, the ChangeLogs (as well as the GCS rules to > > write them) are becoming more and more of a nuisance. > > ChangeLogs may seem like a nuisance but many more people have access > to source tarballs than network-based version control systems. > This situation is much ameliorated if one uses a distributed VCS, though. But I can see how accessing a ChangeLog entry from two yars ago can be easier (and musch faster!) that accessing the corresponding commit message with SVN or CVS, so I got your point.
> It has been shown time and time again that version control systems > come and go (or move) while the source code lives on. > Still, when a project changes its VCS system, the pre-existing history is usually preseved by a proper conversion (for example, I can still access all the automake project history, even that of when its version control system was CVS). > It is typical that ChangeLog messages are considerably higher grade > and more detailed than commit messages. However, the version control > system also offers capabilities (e.g. change sets) that the ChangeLog > does not offer. > For the moment, I'd be happy to just make the automake's ChangeLog automatically generated, as other GNU projects have already done (e.g., coreutils and grep). Regards, Stefano
