[pacman-dev] Discussion about deprecating/removing the changelog feature from pacman.

[Thomas Dziedzic]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:04 AM, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Sven-Hendrik Haase <sh at lutzhaase.com>
> wrote:
> > On 06/23/2011 04:19 PM, Thomas Dziedzic wrote:
> >>
> >> I would like to bring up a point which has been annoying me for a while
> >> and
> >> I would like to get it out there.
> >>
> >> I will argue that the changelog feature is unnecessary in
> >> pacman/PKGBUILDs.
> >>
> >> 1.) It's a feature rarely used by anyone, e.g. there are changelogs
> which
> >> exist which haven't been updated in years which I encounter and remove
> >> right
> >> away.
> >>
> >> 2.)Svn log usually serves the same purpose, and I can not think of any
> >> benefits changelogs provide over svn log.
> >>
> >> 3.)I can not think of one package I have encountered that included a
> >> useful
> >> changelog.
> >>
> >> Some ways to go about removing it are:
> >> declare deprecated ->  remove after some time
> >> or just remove changelog support right away
> >> The last option might be viable given its small audience.
> >>
> > +1 for all the reasons you stated.
> >
> > I favor removing changelog right away.
>
> So confused. Should we remove deltas too? And support for bz2/xz
> packages and databases?
>

Deltas have a future use, I would be crazy to suggest that we should remove
them. There is nothing that could replace deltas easily.
I would be even more crazy to suggest removing xz pkg support as we are
currently using this format in all the packages. There is especially nothing
that could replace this.


> Why on earth would we remove a feature that someone might use, even if
> Arch is not making extensive use of it? This is incredibly
> shortsighted.


I just want to bring this up because there is an alternative method (svn
log) which I think works just as well if not better.


> -Dan
>
>