Peter Volkov wrote:
В Вск, 11/01/2009 в 10:31 +0100, Benedikt Böhm пишет:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 01:56:52AM +0100, Friedrich Oslage wrote:
- - you forgot the ChangeLog entry
`cvs log` is the changelog, i don't see why i should add a changelog entry.
There is the same reason as for ChangeLogs for ebuilds. Users (I'm user
too) don't have cvs log at hand at their systems but still consider that
it's important to know about changes.
Is it really hard to script `echangelog "msg" && cvs commit -m "msg"`?
In my opinion the cvs commit log and the ChangeLog serve 2 different
purposes. The cvs log is for developers while the ChangeLog is for
users. While the cvs log will likely just want to explain what change
was made, the ChangeLog should explain why it was made.
Developers need to realise that users don't know everything about the
software they use and don't always pin down the reasons for unexpected
beviour. Users also don't always read the documentation given to them.
This has been seen recently in the change of default behavior of the
world set in stable portage is a good example of this. Many users didn't
even know about the --update option and many don't read post-commit
messages (I expect because they don't realise the importance of those
messages or how they can change the ELOG options to make the messages
easier to read, for example by having them emailed to them).
There are other examples of insufficient information being given to
users too - the dvdnav USE flag was masked recently, but neither the
ChangeLog or the cvs commit message give any indication as to why this
occurred.
In my opinion Gentoo developers need to do more to communicate with
their users. This could be as simple as prominently posting
documentation on the elog system and how to tailor it. Or it might
involve posting more announcements to the Gentoo website (which would
double up and make the project look more active than it currently does
from its front page).
AllenJB
PS. I know about index2.xml - but that doesn't look like it's going to
be the main front page any time soon at the moment, which is a real
shame because it has some awesome changes.
