[ On , May 23, 2000 at 22:25:06 (-0700), Russ Allbery wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Off topic, sort of: best ChangeLog practices?
>
> One of the problems with abandoning ChangeLog files in favor of the commit
> messages in a revision control system is that ChangeLogs have this really
> valuable grouping property when written well. One change is one ChangeLog
> entry even when it crosses multiple files, and there's often some extra
> meta-information noted there.
One of the problems with ChangeLog files is that unless they are
*always* generated automatically they have a tendancy to be "different"
in unpredictable ways from the "real" logs.
> You can kind of do this with CVS, but CVS logs are fundamentally per-file.
> Either you include information about files other than that particular file
> in the log message so that you can have the entire description of the
> change or you end up doing somewhat difficult breaking up of the change
> description between the multiple log files. And there isn't really any
> one place to go look to see the whole change in one summary.
Typically I always commit all the files at once with the same CVS
command (something that's quite easy to do and now even more trivial to
do with PCL-CVS) and thus I do end up with the identical log entry on
each related revision in each file.
> There's a lot to be said for the more unified format of ChangeLog files.
But unfortunately even if you religiously use something like PCL-CVS to
automatically update the ChangeLog file, or even "rcs2log" to generate
it at release build time, it's still just a "copy" of what I would hope
is the authoritative information.
There's a *LOT* more to be said of more formal documentation, including
detailed release notes written by someone who reads both the log entries
and the actual diffs! ;-)
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Secrets of the Weird <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
