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Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful
From: |
Rical Jasan |
Subject: |
Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful |
Date: |
Mon, 31 Jul 2017 22:50:24 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.8.0 |
On 07/31/2017 06:03 AM, Joseph Myers wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Jul 2017, Rical Jasan wrote:
>
>> On 07/29/2017 03:21 AM, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>>> It is clearly more useful to read the following to grasp what
>>> happened,
>>>
>>> * sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/powerpc/sys/ucontext.h (NFPREG)
>>> [__WORDSIZE != 32]: Rename to __NFPREG and define NFPREG to
>>> __NFPREG if [__USE_MISC].
>>> ...
>>
>> $ git log --grep=NFPREG
>>
>> would be what I would do and would reveal all of the following:
>
> My proposal would mean the git logs would not include ChangeLog-format
$ git log --follow file
will show all commits that affected FILE, also accounting for renames,
but...
> logs (as the problem is with needing to write in that format, for projects
> for which it is not well-suited, rather than with putting that format in
> ChangeLog files once written), and so, in this case, would not name the
> NFPREG identifier at all in the log message, only in the diff itself.
> (Of course, some logs would name the changed entities - where that's a
> relevant level for describing the change in question, which it isn't here.
> So the logs naming a function would in fact be those most likely to be
> relevant to understanding the history of that function, excluding those
> where it's incidental to a larger change.)
My only issue with not enumerating affected functions is increased
difficulty in tracking changes to them. Git (unsure as of which
version) does have:
$ git log -L :<funcname>:<file>
syntax, but I haven't used it enough in practice to know how reliable it
is. Neither do I know how that translates to tracking variables,
macros, structs, or other data types of interest, if at all.
I apologize for misunderstanding the intent of the proposal. While I
don't use ChangeLogs, I actually use that format in my personal projects
(which I'll blame glibc habituation for :), as I do find it a simple and
reliable form of annotation within the commit message (and thus with
`git log --grep='). While it isn't useful to me in a ChangeLog, I find
it so in commit logs.
Further, when you stated in [1], regarding the ChangeLog format,
"without providing any corresponding benefit", I often find myself
performing more thorough review of the final patch for submission,
ensuring I've documented (no matter how tersely; e.g., "New function")
everything that I've touched, which I find helpful as a means of
providing quality documentation of my changes.
Do you know of a good way to cull changes to, for example, a struct,
where the diff would only show changes to its members? IOW, an
alternative to:
(mcontext_t): Use __ctx in defining fields.
For the example patch being discussed, the only reason it would show up
with `git log -G mcontext_t' is because of the ChangeLog entry---there
are otherwise no lines in the diff where an added or removed line
contains mcontext_t. The only reason it shows up with `git log
--grep=mcontext_t' is again because of the ChangeLog format segment of
the commit message---it is not contained within the textual description.
So, I have to say at this point that I see value in the ChangeLog
format, just not the ChangeLogs themselves.
Rical
[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-standards/2017-07/msg00000.html
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful,
Rical Jasan <=
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Alfred M. Szmidt, 2017/08/01
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Rical Jasan, 2017/08/01
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Joseph Myers, 2017/08/01
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Alfred M. Szmidt, 2017/08/04
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Giuseppe Scrivano, 2017/08/04
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Alfred M. Szmidt, 2017/08/04
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Giuseppe Scrivano, 2017/08/04
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Alfred M. Szmidt, 2017/08/04
- Re: Circumstances in which ChangeLog format is no longer useful, Giuseppe Scrivano, 2017/08/04