[arch-dev-public] ChangeLog usage ..

[Stéphane Gaudreault]

Le 13 janvier 2012 11:49:39 Angel Velásquez a écrit :
> 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).
> 
> 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.

This may just be a matter of taste, but personally I found the svn commit logs 
more informative than Changelog files that are incomplete most of the time. If 
you are looking for a one stop place to look what changed in your package, the 
commit logs are probably the right place IMO.

Stéphane