Ludovic Courtès writes: Hello,
> Janneke Nieuwenhuizen <[email protected]> skribis: > >> Yes, the only point I might still disagree on is the ChangeLog (yes, >> git-to-changelog must be fixed, preferrably written in Guile, and until >> then you need to set not only timezone but also locale; well, that's >> doable). But it's a difficult choice, without any generated files: >> good, without ChangeLog: bad. Hmm. > > I used to generate ‘ChangeLog’ files in tarballs like for the Shepherd > but recently removed it (sacrilège!), Nooo! ;) > thinking that people in practice browse the Git log, not ‘ChangeLog’ > files. I think it’s fine and it’s an easy way to address tarball one > source of tarball reproducibility issues. :-) Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I grew up with manually crafted ChangeLog files and often used them to figure out why something changed, or where a bug might have been introduced. Also, another of the many small reasons for me to love the GNU values, and prefer GNU software over other softwares that often do not care that much for the user. I had this strong belief that a tarball without a ChangeLog (or NEWS file even!) would be terrible, like an "assault" on the programmer having to use the software in the absense of internet/git access. Your confession of committing sacrilège though, made me reflect on this. I grew up using rcs, cvs, arch, tla, darcs, bzr, looked at hg, and finally git (yeah, i never "got" the idea of subversion: "A better cvs", when "we" were experimenting with distributed version control systems). So in my mind, I still had the image: every 5 years you'll lose much of your history, and /especially/ much of the metadata. The usefulness of metadata, and the experience (certainty) of losing most of it every couple of years, is one of the reasons I'm very strict at requiring GNU style ChangeLog messages in git. Because, well sure, git blame is superior, /as long as it lasts!/. Anyway, I figure that any transition away from git will be much less lossy, if not loss-less, and as far as ChangeLog files go, we could generate those at any time if the need arises. So yeah, time to also let go of generated ChangeLog files. Do you think it's time to replace `make dist' in Guix by some `git archive' curse yet? Now that we choose to prefer not using tarballs in Guix because they include generated data, wouldn't it make sense not to provide tarballs that contain generated data? Greetings, Janneke -- biting their tongue not to pose the begging question -- Janneke Nieuwenhuizen <[email protected]> | GNU LilyPond https://LilyPond.org Freelance IT https://www.JoyOfSource.com | Avatar® https://AvatarAcademy.com
