Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hello Bill, On Thu, Apr 05 2018, Bill Allombert wrote: > The standard way is to have a transition period where policy allows > for both behaviour. This way, debhelper can be updated without > breaking policy and developers would have a reference for the new > behaviour. > > Then the old

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 12:00:29PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > Hello Adrian, > > Thank you for your continued effort to get this bug resolved. > > On Sat, Mar 10 2018, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > >> Please expand on why you think this is the way we have to proceed. > > > > you skipped the part of

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hello, On Wed, Apr 04 2018, Adrian Bunk wrote: > This ensures that policy will always be horribly outdated. Policy is meant to lag behind practice. One of the reasons for this is that it ensures that no-one feels they have to update Policy before innovating. The extent to which it lags is a

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 12:00:29PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > Hello Adrian, > > Thank you for your continued effort to get this bug resolved. > > On Sat, Mar 10 2018, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > >> Please expand on why you think this is the way we have to proceed. > > > > you skipped the part of

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hello Adrian, Thank you for your continued effort to get this bug resolved. On Sat, Mar 10 2018, Adrian Bunk wrote: >> Please expand on why you think this is the way we have to proceed. > > you skipped the part of my email with the explanation: > > with such a piecemeal approach > we risk

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 11:03:05PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: >... > > > I think > > > the most valuable starting point would to be to standardize on > > > /usr/share/doc/package/NEWS.gz for the human-readable summary and > > > explicitly say to never install that as > > >

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 10:09:59PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > Hello, Hi Sean, > On Tue, Feb 27 2018, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > > Policy should define the naming before dh_installchangelogs should > > change. > > Please expand on why you think this is the way we have to proceed. you skipped the

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hello, On Tue, Feb 27 2018, Adrian Bunk wrote: > Policy should define the naming before dh_installchangelogs should > change. Please expand on why you think this is the way we have to proceed. We try to have Policy reflect changes already in the archive, rather than the other way around,

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Sun, Dec 03, 2017 at 05:24:09PM +0100, gregor herrmann wrote: > On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 20:45:51 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > > > I think > > the most valuable starting point would to be to standardize on > > /usr/share/doc/package/NEWS.gz for the human-readable summary and > > explicitly say to

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Fri, Dec 08, 2017 at 10:29:50AM -0500, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > On 12/1/17 11:19, Ian Jackson wrote: > > Is there some reason why exacdt standardisation of the filenames is > > necessary here ? For most of the uses I can think of, it is OK to > > look in a handful of files to see which one

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Peter Eisentraut writes ("Re: Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling"): > On 12/1/17 11:19, Ian Jackson wrote: > > Is there some reason why exacdt standardisation of the filenames is > > necessary here ? For most of the uses I can think of, it is OK to > > look in

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On 12/1/17 11:19, Ian Jackson wrote: > Is there some reason why exacdt standardisation of the filenames is > necessary here ? For most of the uses I can think of, it is OK to > look in a handful of files to see which one might answer the question. I wrote the bug originally. My goal was simply

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 20:45:51 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > I think > the most valuable starting point would to be to standardize on > /usr/share/doc/package/NEWS.gz for the human-readable summary and > explicitly say to never install that as > /usr/share/doc/package/changelog.gz. That would

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hello, On Thu, Nov 30 2017, Russ Allbery wrote: > Unfortunately, there's no good way to do this transition without > making a whole ton of packages buggy, since we're horribly > inconsistent about how we handle this now. I think that's just > something we should tackle, and make it very clear

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 08:45:51PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Bill Allombert writes: > > > git log might be more useful in some situation and extremly inconvenient > > in some others (to start with it require network access and cloning the > > full project history). > > A

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Russ Allbery writes ("Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling"): > Unfortunately, there's no good way to do this transition without making a > whole ton of packages buggy, since we're horribly inconsistent about how > we handle this now. I think that's just something we should

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 09:37:32PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > This is okay 80% of the time and badly needs manual editing the remaining > 20% of the time. I personally would never be willing to forgo good > changelogs in that remaining 20% of the time that can't really be handled > with commit

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Josh Triplett writes: > I *do* use apt-listchanges to reach changelogs, and I'm not advocating > that they not exist; I'm simply arguing that they make it a pain to keep > a Debian package in git, and that we ought to autogenerate them from git > log and some care taken in

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 08:50:11PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Jonathan Nieder writes: > >> I would go so far as to say that I hope we one day stop shipping a > >> non-generated debian/changelog in source packages, because it incurs > >> all the same pain. > > > I've been

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hello Jonathan, On Thu, Nov 30 2017, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > I've been trying to make debian/changelog in packages I work on > user-focused, and no one has complained yet. > > I also use NEWS.Debian for notes about incompatibilities that will > affect sysadmins upgrading. Yes. If you read the

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Jonathan Nieder writes: > How do you feel about generated changelogs in release tarballs that > are generated by tools like "git log"? I think they're a waste of space and effort. The circumstances in which those are useful are so obscure that I think more harm than good is

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Bill Allombert writes: > git log might be more useful in some situation and extremly inconvenient > in some others (to start with it require network access and cloning the > full project history). A complete changelog is often an appreciable percentage of the size of that

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 06:56:53PM -0800, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > Josh Triplett wrote: > > On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 00:04:20 +0100 Bill Allombert > > wrote: > > >> The fact that some upstream do not bother to ship useful changelog does > >> not mean that all changelog are

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Josh Triplett wrote: > On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 00:04:20 +0100 Bill Allombert wrote: >> The fact that some upstream do not bother to ship useful changelog does >> not mean that all changelog are useless, and by removing them we >> discourage upstream of producing useful changelog.

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 00:04:20 +0100 Bill Allombert wrote: > Both the content and the name of the upstream changelogs is an upstream > issue. The fact that a file is named by upstream Changelog instead of > NEWS does not imply anything on its usefulness. It might even happen >

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 11:01:08PM -0500, Jeremy Bicha wrote: > As others have said, running 'git log' is far more useful than a > complete changelog and in my experience, most projects these days > outside of GNU don't bother shipping changelogs. > > Most of my Debian and Ubuntu work involves

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hi, gregor herrmann wrote: > From the Perl world, looking at roughly ~3400 packages I have locally > cloned: > > 28 have a NEWS file (most of them with a Gnome/GTK background), 1 > News, 1 news. > > 3368 have a Changes, CHANGES, Changelog, ChangeLog, (and some other > variations like

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hello Simon, On Wed, Nov 29 2017, Simon McVittie wrote: > How about something like this? > [...] Thank you for taking the time to write up patch text for this bug. FWIW I would second it, however: I think that debhelper's behaviour needs to be sorted out before we can change what Policy says.

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 11:34:21 +, Simon McVittie wrote: > > Most of my Debian and Ubuntu work involves GNOME packaging. For the > > most part, GNOME components ships NEWS files which are much more > > interesting for users or developers to read for highlights of what > > changed when. > This is

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 at 23:01:08 -0500, Jeremy Bicha wrote: > As others have said, running 'git log' is far more useful than a > complete changelog and in my experience, most projects these days > outside of GNU don't bother shipping changelogs. Many of those projects that do ship a ChangeLog

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

As others have said, running 'git log' is far more useful than a complete changelog and in my experience, most projects these days outside of GNU don't bother shipping changelogs. Most of my Debian and Ubuntu work involves GNOME packaging. For the most part, GNOME components ships NEWS files

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Yuri D'Elia writes: > On Mon, Jan 02 2017, Russ Allbery wrote: >> No matter what we do here, we're going to make a bunch of packages >> buggy, because the archive is very divided on current best practice. >> :( > Buggy in the sense that existing packages wouldn't comply with

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Mon, Jan 02 2017, Russ Allbery wrote: > No matter what we do here, we're going to make a bunch of packages buggy, > because the archive is very divided on current best practice. :( Buggy in the sense that existing packages wouldn't comply with the new rules? I don't see this as "buggyness",

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Yuri D'Elia writes: > In fact, I'd rather have a consistent NEWS location, and shift the focus > to this release summary instead, while not changing the existing > changelog rules. It's way more consistent with the best practices > already seen everywhere in source tarballs.

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Sun, Jan 01 2017, Andreas Henriksson wrote: > My personal opinion is that a changelog is something where every change > is guaranteed to be logged. (And that guarantee is basically just saying > that if it's ever noticed that a change was not logged, that's indeed a > bug.) > A NEWS file is

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Hello, This is one issue I think would be nice to have resolved so will add my personal opinion below On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 02:55:00PM +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Package: debian-policy > Version: 3.7.3.0 > Severity: normal > > There is some lack of clarity in the policy or perhaps

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 09:21:02PM +0100, Jakub Wilk wrote: * Peter Eisentraut pete...@gmx.net, 2008-01-06, 14:55: I think that installing a source-level change list is hardly ever useful for a binary package. It's normally more useful that no changelog at all. :-) What I tend to do in my

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 02:55:00PM +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote: There is some lack of clarity in the policy or perhaps some confusion among packagers and thence inconsistencies among packages regarding the handling of upstream changelog files. Policy says that upstream changelogs should be

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

* Peter Eisentraut pete...@gmx.net, 2008-01-06, 14:55: I think that installing a source-level change list is hardly ever useful for a binary package. It's normally more useful that no changelog at all. :-) What I tend to do in my packages is: if user-level change list exists: install

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

Package: debian-policy Version: 3.7.3.0 Severity: normal There is some lack of clarity in the policy or perhaps some confusion among packagers and thence inconsistencies among packages regarding the handling of upstream changelog files. Policy says that upstream changelogs should be installed as