Re: What is our ChangeLog management policy?

[Dave Kemper]

On 9/5/21, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> I envision of rough trichotomy of correspondence.
>
>       NEWS                    all users
>       ChangeLog               packagers/expert users
>       commit messages         groff developers

As one data point, I'm neither packager nor groff developer, and I'd
rate myself an intermediate-knowledge user.  I look at commit messages
frequently and pretty much never at the ChangeLog.


On 9/5/21, Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de> wrote:
> While i do see the point in the three-tier system outlined by Branden,
> let me note that it causes more work for developers, which is not ideal
> for a small development team with little time to spare.

If the middle tier is deemed worth keeping, could it be autogenerated
with an agreed-upon use of tags in the commit messages?  That is, each
commit could be tagged as [behavior change], [bug fix], [refactor],
etc., and a change log with more or less detail could be generated by
selecting which tags to include.  (Or, more simply and less
error-prone, there could be untagged commits and commits tagged
[minor], and a log generation tool could omit the minor ones.)  This
involves a little start-up work of writing such a script (if none
exists in the wild), but should streamline developers' workflow in the
long run.