Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 10:39 PM, Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com wrote: On 10/29/2014 04:29 PM, Diego Elio Pettenò wrote: Can't we just say that gnu-flavour automake is pointless and foreign should be the default? Or am I too opinionated on that? For GNU projects, the 'gnu' flavor still makes sense, even if it could use a little modernization such as easier automation of generating ChangeLog from version control. And while these days, automake is probably used by more non-gnu projects (where 'foreign' may make more sense) than GNU projects, that's still not a good reason to toggle the default. I like what the GNU Coding Standards represent, and deviating from them deserves a mention in configure.ac to make it apparent that you thought about it. Having to either specify 'foreign' or creating files like ChangeLog or AUTHORS is an extra step in initializing an automake project, which would be a slightly tricky and involved process even without this step. It's annoying that automake /could/ run, but refuses to because you forgot to put AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS=foreign in Makefile.am. Extra steps like this limit the usefulness and applicability of a program Even if you intend to follow the GNU Coding Standards you will not necessarily want to write all these files at the beginning. Or the project may never be intended for release. What about checking for these files in make distcheck instead? That way you could initialize and use an automake build system without worrying about it, but you would still get a warning when you were thinking of making a release, when the project is in a more complete state.
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
Hi Flameeyes, Am 30.10.2014 00:43, schrieb Diego Elio Pettenò: All good and well, but then I may have misunderstood Arne's original point. If he's trying to get the GNU style to be good enough That means I did not make my point clear enough. Second try: I don’t want to change the GNU style. I want to have an easier way to *adhere to* the existing GNU style by providing default tool support for creating the ChangeLog and AUTHORS file from versiontracking systems. Having NEWS, README, ChangeLog and AUTHORS in a release tarball makes a lot of sense, and having NEWS and README also makes a lot of sense in a version tracking system (I see that every time I try to use a project which does not have them). It’s just that when using a version tracking system, the ChangeLog and AUTHORS file mostly duplicate information which is already in the version tracking system. This isn’t true for all projects. With complicated history a generated ChangeLog can become useless and when committing patches from others and forgetting to change the user, an autogenerated AUTHORS file can simply be wrong. But for most projects they should be valid. Additional motivation for this: If I want to teach someone to switch from a simple Makefile to autotools, I have to talk about - configure.ac (this is mostly copy-paste, adjusting name and version) - Makefile.am (copy-paste from a similar project or adapt a Makefile) - autoreconf -i; ./configure; make (“copy this into the README”) - NEWS (“put the newest version at the top”) - README (“describe how to use the project and how to contribute”) - AUTHORS (“name all people who contributed”) - ChangeLog (describe the changes in GNU style. This means: - first line: date and author: https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Style-of-Change-Logs.html - changes indented. - Start each changed file with a star (* file). - optionally name the function. - (a few special cases). - Description after a colon and in following lines, also indented. - empty line between independent changes? As you can see, how to write a conforming ChangeLog takes roughly as much explanation as writing the configure.ac. And every new contributor will have to learn how to do that (while the other topics are only needed for the initial setup or for the maintainer). Best wishes, Arne PS: I consider make distcheck as the gold standard for distributing projects. I did not yet find a tool which gets close to matching that. -- Doktorand Gruppe: GHG Raum: 435/410 Tel.: +49 721 608-22885 arne.babenhauserhe...@kit.edu Karlsruher Institut für Technologie IMK-ASF Postfach 36 40 76021 Karlsruhe 0xA70DA09E.asc Description: application/pgp-keys attachment: arne_babenhauserheide.vcf signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
On 30 October 2014 06:45, Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK) arne.babenhauserhe...@kit.edu wrote: Am 30.10.2014 00:43, schrieb Diego Elio Pettenò: I don’t want to change the GNU style. I want to have an easier way to *adhere to* the existing GNU style by providing default tool support for creating the ChangeLog and AUTHORS file from versiontracking systems. Great. But people don't *want* to adhere to the GNU style, most people just end up creating 0-sized AUTHORS NEWS and ChangeLog files, because otherwise automake fails, and then they complain about autotools being messy and requiring useless boilerplate. Additional motivation for this: If I want to teach someone to switch from a simple Makefile to autotools, I have to talk about https://autotools.io/whosafraid.html For 90% of the non-library projects out there this will cover enough that is needed to start. As you can see, how to write a conforming ChangeLog takes roughly as much explanation as writing the configure.ac. And every new contributor will have to learn how to do that (while the other topics are only needed for the initial setup or for the maintainer). So here is the usual disagreement. I don't like GNU style and I think that imposing it and wasting people's time on it is not worth it at all. Again I don't have stakes on the gnu style because I don't use it. I don't want to use it. And I don't want to force anybody else to use it. I usually make people happy when I tell them you can use automake in foreign mode because then there is no 0-sized top-level file there just to make it happy. Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
Am 30.10.2014 10:15, schrieb Diego Elio Pettenò: On 30 October 2014 06:45, Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK) arne.babenhauserhe...@kit.edu wrote: Am 30.10.2014 00:43, schrieb Diego Elio Pettenò: I don’t want to change the GNU style. I want to have an easier way to *adhere to* the existing GNU style by providing default tool support for creating the ChangeLog and AUTHORS file from versiontracking systems. Great. But people don't *want* to adhere to the GNU style, Do not want to adhere to the GNU style or do they not want to bother with creating the files? There is a very important difference in motivation: People from the first group get what they want with foreign style. People from the latter group however would be happy to use GNU style, if it did not create additional work for them. This change is for the latter group, since the former group can already switch to foreign style by just adding a single parameter. most people just end up creating 0-sized AUTHORS NEWS and ChangeLog files, because otherwise automake fails, and then they complain about autotools being messy and requiring useless boilerplate. Autogenerating the AUTHORS and ChangeLog would reduce this to a single 0-sized file, because nowadays most people understand that a README is important -- I think the same will happen for the NEWS file, once code hosting platforms start using the NEWS file as source to provide human-readable news about projects. Then this would eliminate the 0-sized files. Best wishes, Arne PS: I know your autotools mythbuster: It helped me a lot in adding distcheck-support for my projects. Example: https://bitbucket.org/ArneBab/wisp/src/6cf3f78205bec638f9eb8aba7344946e70bfd0e1/Makefile.am Sadly much of my own autotools work also involved cargo-culting. Note: Here you note that autotools need COPYING, but this is created automatically nowadays. You only need to provide it if you don’t want to use the GPL. - https://autotools.io/automake/options.html -- Doktorand Gruppe: GHG Raum: 435/410 Tel.: +49 721 608-22885 arne.babenhauserhe...@kit.edu Karlsruher Institut für Technologie IMK-ASF Postfach 36 40 76021 Karlsruhe 0xA70DA09E.asc Description: application/pgp-keys attachment: arne_babenhauserheide.vcf signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
On 30 October 2014 09:55, Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK) arne.babenhauserhe...@kit.edu wrote: Great. But people don't *want* to adhere to the GNU style, Do not want to adhere to the GNU style or do they not want to bother with creating the files? There is a very important difference in motivation: People from the first group get what they want with foreign style. People from the latter group however would be happy to use GNU style, if it did not create additional work for them. The problem is that it does, given that GNU style is not the presence of those four files or not, but also involves the portability warnings and further limitations designed for the GNU project, that they most likely won't care about. I get it, you want to get them to see the Light of GNU. But I'm not there to indoctrinate on the style of ChangeLog people need to use, I'm there to get people a working build system that does not drive packagers crazy. This change is for the latter group, since the former group can already switch to foreign style by just adding a single parameter. Thus why I'm saying I don't care. If you want to do that for the GNU people I don't care, I just think it's a false assumption that people won't be complaining about another of the GNU style rules at some point. Autogenerating the AUTHORS and ChangeLog would reduce this to a single 0-sized file, because nowadays most people understand that a README is important -- I think the same will happen for the NEWS file, once code hosting platforms start using the NEWS file as source to provide human-readable news about projects. Then this would eliminate the 0-sized files. Err, no. I mean no really. Autogenerating them may help sure, but I don't think people understand a README is important — people get *forced* to understand a README is needed, but for instance I wouldn't use gnu style anyway because I call my file README.md so that GitHub at least *renders* it correctly. So yeah, I still expect 0-sized files all around. Note: Here you note that autotools need COPYING, but this is created automatically nowadays. You only need to provide it if you don’t want to use the GPL. Which once again I'm not assuming people do. Because I've seen packages in which the README and the source says MIT, but then they got a default GPL COPYING in there. Which is bad, and I hope I don't have to explain to you how and why. Again, carry on, it can't make things worse but I'll still suggest people to stay away from gnu style unless they are part of the GNU project. Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
Can't we just say that gnu-flavour automake is pointless and foreign should be the default? Or am I too opinionated on that? Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/ On 29 October 2014 15:27, Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK) arne.babenhauserhe...@kit.edu wrote: Dear GNU Hackers, In quite a few guides I saw people suggest using the foreign automake style to avoid having to create the required text files. The goal of this email is to get more people to use the GNU style, so the interface for understanding an autotools project becomes more consistent again: GNU style should become standard for all guides. Among the required files, NEWS is easy to create but cannot be guessed automatically because it is intended for humans, and README is becoming standard (again) due to most code hosting sites using it as the summary page. AUTHORS and ChangeLog normally only contain information which already available in most version tracking systems - and can be created easily from that. If autotools did this automatically, the barrier for using GNU style in the autotools with a version tracking system would be much smaller: Just write README and NEWS. I initially planned to just send a small example script, but that matured faster than I had expected, so you can now find it at https://bitbucket.org/ArneBab/autochangelog/src/tip/create-or-update-changelog-and-authors.sh If someone with git-foo could cleanup the git ChangeLog creation to conform with the GNU ChangeLog standard, that script should be a good working example. The script only touches files which were created by the script or are missing. Best wishes, Arne PS: I initially sent this mail to the autoconf list. The original discussion is at [1] and includes the gnulib script which roughly does for git what I propose here. Doing this in automake would have the advantage that all users benefit from the lower barrier of entry to the consistent GNU style. [1]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2014-10/msg0.html -- Doktorand Gruppe: GHG Raum: 435/410 Tel.: +49 721 608-22885 arne.babenhauserhe...@kit.edu Karlsruher Institut für Technologie IMK-ASF Postfach 36 40 76021 Karlsruhe
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
On 10/29/2014 04:29 PM, Diego Elio Pettenò wrote: [we tend to avoid top-posting on technical lists] Can't we just say that gnu-flavour automake is pointless and foreign should be the default? Or am I too opinionated on that? For GNU projects, the 'gnu' flavor still makes sense, even if it could use a little modernization such as easier automation of generating ChangeLog from version control. And while these days, automake is probably used by more non-gnu projects (where 'foreign' may make more sense) than GNU projects, that's still not a good reason to toggle the default. I like what the GNU Coding Standards represent, and deviating from them deserves a mention in configure.ac to make it apparent that you thought about it. -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com+1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?
On 29 October 2014 22:39, Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com wrote: [we tend to avoid top-posting on technical lists] Sorry, me sleepy and not paying enough attention. Can't we just say that gnu-flavour automake is pointless and foreign should be the default? Or am I too opinionated on that? For GNU projects, the 'gnu' flavor still makes sense, even if it could use a little modernization such as easier automation of generating ChangeLog from version control. And while these days, automake is probably used by more non-gnu projects (where 'foreign' may make more sense) than GNU projects, that's still not a good reason to toggle the default. I like what the GNU Coding Standards represent, and deviating from them deserves a mention in configure.ac to make it apparent that you thought about it. All good and well, but then I may have misunderstood Arne's original point. If he's trying to get the GNU style to be good enough for more projects, I think that's a moot point because as you said most projects use it outside of GNU, and they would probably still find enough issues with it that they wouldn't use it — and they would probably still complain about bad autotools doing bad things because they copy-paste from the wrong project. If we're talking of making life easier for GNU maintainers, I have no opinion because I have no stakes on the matter at all. Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes flamee...@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/
