On 8/13/11 5:39 PM, Joachim Breitner wrote:
Hi,
Am Samstag, den 13.08.2011, 12:57 +0200 schrieb Joachim Breitner:
Maybe it would already help to add a "changelog-file" field to .cabal,
just as with license-file, and reject packages on hackage that do not
have this field and file, and later decide if we need a more
standardized format for changelogs.
here is a first step in improving the Haskell ecosystem with that
regard:
The patch attached to http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/873
makes "cabal check" remind the author that a changelog file is good
practice (without fixing a name or format, or adding a field to
the .cabal file). I hope it gets applied (hence CC’ing cabal-devel).
Changing developers’ behavior by nudging tools is something that works
great in Debian – if you want a change to get implemented across
multiple packages, make sure lintian tells you about it. Hoping that
people tend to run cabal check before uploading their package, they
would now be reminded to include a changelog file.
+1.
The next steps towards great changes documentation would then be:
* Defining a changelog-file field in cabal.
* Adding support to hackage to display the changelog.
* Possibly define a suggested format for changelogs.
At the risk of overengineering, perhaps the easiest way to deal with
format bikeshedding is just to define an enumeration of formats just
like the enumeration of licenses. That way machine-readable formats are
annotated by which machine should read them, but crotchety developers
don't have to change their changelogging preferences. After that's in
place, then we can worry about the social pressure to get the community
to agree on a smaller set of formats (just like has happened with licenses).
--
Live well,
~wren
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