Re: Using VC for change descriptions

[Joseph Myers]

On Wed, 10 Jan 2018, John Darrington wrote:

> b) Simply require that the commit message of the VCS takes the same format
>    and information that we currently use for the ChangeLog entry, and auto
>    generate the ChangeLog using the message previously entered by the 
> committer.
> 
> I think that a) would be non-trivial.  But b) would indeed be trivial.  Why 
> don't
> we allow maintainers (at their option) to do the 3b approach?  

The standards *already* allow 3b, and have for over 20 years 
(standards.texi, r1.27, 9 Sep 1996, "Another alternative is to record 
change log information with a version control system such as RCS or CVS.  
This can be converted automatically to a @file{ChangeLog} file.").

This discussion has always been about the ChangeLog format, not about the 
use of automatic generation of a ChangeLog file from commit messages.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
address@hidden