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

[Dan McGee]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Thomas Dziedzic <gostrc at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Sure, but this is Arch specific. I obviously had no intention of
removing delta, xz, etc. but my point is the changelog functionality
is exactly the same- it is a tool to use, but not something to be
removed if it is not used.

-Dan