Hi Karl, On 10 Nov 2011, at 06:45, Karl Berry wrote: > Sorry, I didn't know I was in the loop here. Didn't see my name at the > bottom of a 200-line msg with lots of quotes.
No worries, that's what I figured :) > Having now read it, I am not sure what the question is. Maybe it's > this: ChangeLog's of FSF-copyrighted packages must keep the "(tiny > change)" convention as far as I have ever heard. rms has always very > strongly resisted the idea of putting necessary information into VC > metadata and nowhere else. > > On the other hand, any method for creating the "(tiny change)" is > acceptable. > > Does that help? Probably not. Let me know ... That's most of it, yes. Thank you! Jim, I believe, wants to know whether: >> establishing such a convention. >> and going to this trouble is worthwhile, since the size of the >> change is already known, via the associated patch. I.e. Can we just take the difference between lines added and lines removed per patch, and automatically add the (tiny change) annotation to the generated ChangeLog if that turns out to be 5 or less? I tend to think not, as some judgement is always required: refilling a long function by adding 100 newlines is a couple of minutes of effort and certainly a qualifies as a tiny change - adding a complex pivotal 2 line macro and tweaking an existing macro that uses it in another line might represent days of research development and testing and is certainly not a tiny change. And then there is the huge grey are between. I'm also interested in whether you have an opinion on my preference for 'Copyright-paperwork-required' as the VCS tag, rather than say, 'Tiny-change'? Considering that most of the patches I receive that are in need of a ChangeLog (tiny change) annotation come from non- GNU maintainers, on a good day we're often ask why their patch is marked that way... so I'm forever explaining that we're not belittling their contribution, but merely noting that we don't require them to file a copyright disclaimer. On a bad day, we may have inadvertently discouraged someone from submitting further improvements to the code if they feel insulted, but don't ask why their patch is "tiny". Obviously the convention for ChangeLog is set in stone, but I'd like to take the opportunity here to choose a less confusing tag to put in git (which will likely be what the patch submitter sees in the commit emails their patch generates, or by running git diff). >>> Even if somewhere you've felt "insistence" on this issue, >>> let's just write "request": > > "(tiny change)" is more than a request. That is my impression too. Cheers, -- Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)
