ChangeLog format

[Christian Stimming]

Hi Chris,

well, if nobody answered so far, then I'd hesistantly voice my 2 cents...

Chris Shoemaker schrieb:
>>Tell you what: I propose changing the format of the ChangeLog
>>slightly.  

First of all: Sorry, but I'm a whiner and I don't like changes, 
especially none which require to change my habits :-)) .

The current ChangeLog format is the one I get when I type 
"add-change-log-entry" in (x)emacs, so I didn't see much reason to 
change the formatting.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/Change-Log.html
Can your proposed format added in a similarly automated way by the 
developers' favorite editors?

>>Proposed format changes: 
>>        1) Email addresses are not required 

If you don't want to add yours, it's fine with me.

>>        2) 'Action' characters may replace '*'.  E.g.:
>>   M /trunk/Makefile.am
>>   A /trunk/po/glossary/nb.po (from /trunk/po/glossary/no.po:12015)
>>   D /trunk/po/glossary/no.po
>>   M /trunk/po/nb.po

Fine with me, too, although 1. again the existing format is the one 
supported by (x)emacs, and 2. The addition and deletion of a file by 
itself isn't very interesting; much more interesting is the free-text 
explanation of why this happened: "Moved content of bla.c into foo.c" 
vs. "Removed bla.c and added implementation of xy in foo.c instead"; I'm 
just saying that the information content of these action characters is 
rather limited, IMHO.

>>        3) Changed filepaths may specify what branch the change was
>>made on.

Err... no, that doesn't work if we have one ChangeLog file per branch as 
we currently have. Not quite agreed.

I agree that the "one ChangeLog per branch" in itself is problematic on 
merge, but that's another discussion and currently there isn't an easy 
way out except for a generated file using "svn log", which in turn may 
turn out more useful over time than we currently use it. But currently 
we still like our ChangeLog file, so that's just a given for now.

>>        4) Commit dates may include time, too.

Disagreed. Too much noise. I still think the ChangeLog file should 
contain less information than "svn log".

>>        5) Commit messages don't have to be block-indented.

You mean the messages itself have zero indentation? Err... IMHO that 
would decrease readability. Not quite agreed. If you propose to have one 
whitespace indentation instead of one tab: agreed. Whatever identation 
is preferred.

>>        6) Fields in the first log line may be delimited by ' | '
>>instead of only ' '.
>>
>>        7) First log line may include svn revision number.

Fine with me.

On the other hand I've been active in other projects where two different 
developers used more or less completely different ChangeLog entry 
formats. It *is* possible to work that way, too. So instead of turning 
this into yet another 50-emails-debate I'd rather loosen the 
restrictions on the ChangeLog entries... anyway. Here's your feedback.

Christian