Re: [arch-general] [arch-dev-public] ChangeLog usage ..
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 11:49:39AM -0300, Angel Velásquez wrote:
Hi,
For some packages that i've been maintaining over months I have to keep a ChangeLog .. since it's supported with pacman, and give us (devs and tus) some resume, also this resume give to our users the idea of what is being applied in this release/version of a package.
I usually do that on critical packages, and packages that have a previous ChangeLog file.
So, a good practice is, if you're doing the favour to other dev to maintain or rebuild his package, and this guy added a ChangeLog .. the correct way to proceed is to write something in it, maybe this can sound you like zomfg this is not kiss! .. but stuff like this bring us quality IMHO. For example, I have been busy those months, and maybe i will continue to be busy a few months more, but trust me, in my real spare time, i dedicate sometime to the project, and when I saw that my packages were updated I would like to know who and what change he did instead to diff + look at the bugtracker + look at the rebuilds + look at the mailing list .. as i've said, sometimes the free time is like 2 hours or less per day, so i loose some much time just seing commit logs and checking the bug tracker, having the changelog that I've been using will help me for sure.
Again, i'm not criticizing anybody, i'm just in favour of start doing the things better and better, and i've had several packages that were updated by someother devs/tus (and I am grateful with them) but, they miss the part to fill the ChangeLog which makes me wonder what they did on the packages (for sure, i've read a lot and now i'm confident of what they did, but this makes me waste a whole morning reading mails, bugtracker, and reading the logs of the svn).
I'm all for writing useful (and detailed, if necessary) commit messages instead of writing ChangeLog entries. We use a VCS for some reason. Using proper commit messages makes changes damn easy to follow without having to maintain these inconvenient ChangeLog files.
That said, Have a nice weekend, i will try to smash bugs and update some of my packages in order to be up to date the next week.
P.S.: You should probably CC mails to aur-general if they affect TUs as well.
-- Angel Velásquez angvp @ irc.freenode.net Arch Linux Developer / Trusted User Linux Counter: #359909 http://www.angvp.com
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Lukas Fleischer <archlinux@cryptocrack.de> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 11:49:39AM -0300, Angel Velásquez wrote: I'm all for writing useful (and detailed, if necessary) commit messages instead of writing ChangeLog entries. We use a VCS for some reason. Using proper commit messages makes changes damn easy to follow without having to maintain these inconvenient ChangeLog files. It's more easy to read a human changelog, (shipped with packages which don't needs to connect to archlinux.org), than developer oriented commits. We can make the synthesis of several commit in the changelog to make it more understandable. And still try to make atomic commits.
In addition separates VCS message and package history, let's it independant from vcs tools (svn/git/hg) we choose at a time. -- Sébastien Luttringer www.seblu.net
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 07:44:31PM +0100, Seblu wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Lukas Fleischer <archlinux@cryptocrack.de> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 11:49:39AM -0300, Angel Velásquez wrote: I'm all for writing useful (and detailed, if necessary) commit messages instead of writing ChangeLog entries. We use a VCS for some reason. Using proper commit messages makes changes damn easy to follow without having to maintain these inconvenient ChangeLog files. It's more easy to read a human changelog, (shipped with packages which don't needs to connect to archlinux.org), than developer oriented commits.
I don't really see any big difference here. Commit messages should be detailed and comprehensible as well. I'm not sure what you mean by "developer oriented" but if your commit messages cannot be understood by any user, you're probably doing something wrong :) Check [1] for an example of how a commit message should look like.
We can make the synthesis of several commit in the changelog to make it more understandable. And still try to make atomic commits.
Yes, separate changelogs make sense if we do summarize changes that are spread over a lot of commits (like the "NEWS" file in pacman). We usually don't have such changes to our packages, though (99% of changes are made in a single commit). Please let me know if I'm wrong...
In addition separates VCS message and package history, let's it independant from vcs tools (svn/git/hg) we choose at a time.
Proper VCS support importing history from others (check git-svn(1) and git-cvsimport(1) for Git). And even if it cannot not be done, we could still convert commit history to a text file later.
-- Sébastien Luttringer www.seblu.net
[1] http://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/commit/?id=77c0210bce13...
On 14/01/12 08:51, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 07:44:31PM +0100, Seblu wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Lukas Fleischer <archlinux@cryptocrack.de> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 11:49:39AM -0300, Angel Velásquez wrote: I'm all for writing useful (and detailed, if necessary) commit messages instead of writing ChangeLog entries. We use a VCS for some reason. Using proper commit messages makes changes damn easy to follow without having to maintain these inconvenient ChangeLog files. It's more easy to read a human changelog, (shipped with packages which don't needs to connect to archlinux.org), than developer oriented commits.
I don't really see any big difference here. Commit messages should be detailed and comprehensible as well. I'm not sure what you mean by "developer oriented" but if your commit messages cannot be understood by any user, you're probably doing something wrong :)
Check [1] for an example of how a commit message should look like.
While I agree that a good commit message should be used, that is a side point to the original email. What was being asked was that if someone chooses to maintain a ChangeLog for their package, then you should also update the ChangeLog file if you make an update to that package. Allan
On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 09:18:06AM +1000, Allan McRae wrote:
On 14/01/12 08:51, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 07:44:31PM +0100, Seblu wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Lukas Fleischer <archlinux@cryptocrack.de> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 11:49:39AM -0300, Angel Velásquez wrote: I'm all for writing useful (and detailed, if necessary) commit messages instead of writing ChangeLog entries. We use a VCS for some reason. Using proper commit messages makes changes damn easy to follow without having to maintain these inconvenient ChangeLog files. It's more easy to read a human changelog, (shipped with packages which don't needs to connect to archlinux.org), than developer oriented commits.
I don't really see any big difference here. Commit messages should be detailed and comprehensible as well. I'm not sure what you mean by "developer oriented" but if your commit messages cannot be understood by any user, you're probably doing something wrong :)
Check [1] for an example of how a commit message should look like.
While I agree that a good commit message should be used, that is a side point to the original email.
What was being asked was that if someone chooses to maintain a ChangeLog for their package, then you should also update the ChangeLog file if you make an update to that package.
Agreed, and I'm also for keeping the maintainer's PKGBUILD formatting if you update a package (unless it breaks something, of course). Sorry for being slightly off-topic and turning this into a "ChangeLog vs. commit log" discussion.
Allan
participants (3)
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Allan McRae
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Lukas Fleischer
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Seblu