Re: Using VC for change descriptions

[Richard Stallman]

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[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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There are two reasons I doubt that examining the VC records
is an adequate substitute for detailed ChangeLog files.  One is this:

  > Regarding the overall benefit of it, I think you miss the point that VCS
  > history (containing the diffs) is not distributed with the tarballs.
  > For the users the NEWS and ChangeLog files are their easiest way to
  > understand why a function doesn't act as it previously does or a file
  > doesn't exist anymore when testing a new release.  So IMO the benefit is
  > for the users not the maintainers.

The other is that this

  > Regarding the overall benefit of it, I think you miss the point that VCS
  > history (containing the diffs) is not distributed with the tarballs.
  > For the users the NEWS and ChangeLog files are their easiest way to
  > understand why a function doesn't act as it previously does or a file
  > doesn't exist anymore when testing a new release.  So IMO the benefit is
  > for the users not the maintainers.

does not seem simple -- quite the contrary, it seems that it would
require a fair amount of expertise in using Git.

However, if people write a set of scripts to search for all changes in 
a particular kind fo C entity, and likewise for each other language,
that would deal with the complexity once and for all.  That might be an
ok solution.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.