ChangeLog generation (was: GnuCash 2.1.2 Released)

[Christian Stimming]

Thanks, Chris, for packaging up the new release!

Am Sonntag, 20. Mai 2007 19:09 schrieb Vladimir Weinstein:
> The download is missing http://svn.gnucash.org/repo/gnucash/tags/
> 2.1.2/macros/svn2cl.xsl file.
> For some reason, when I try to build on MacBookPro, make wants to
> generate ChangeLog using this file. If it is not present, the break
> builds at the start. If I download it, the build continues.

Thanks for the info. The "ChangeLog generation" should be run if and only if 
the file "NEWS" is newer than "ChangeLog", which should happen only if anyone 
has modified the file "NEWS" manually but not run "make" since then. Could 
you please check whether this condition (NEWS newer than ChangeLog) was given 
on your MacBookPro before you had to download this file? Thanks.

This is weird - for some people, the rule for generating the ChangeLog seems 
to be triggered. But it should be as follows: When Chris was packaging it, 
the rule triggered once (due to newer NEWS), but since then, ChangeLog should 
be newer than NEWS and hence the rule should *not* trigger for anyone else 
except Chris after changing NEWS.

I think we have two, well, three options on how to handle this:

 1: Add macros/svn2cl.xsl to EXTRA_DIST, so that when this rule for whatever 
reason triggeres anywhere, it will be executed normally: It downloads the 
approx. 300K of log info from svn.gnucash.org and runs xsltproc, both of 
which will consume quite some time :-(

 2: Modify the ChangeLog rule so that if there is no $srcdir/macros/svn2cl.xsl 
file, the ChangeLog file is touched and that's it.  However, if for whatever 
other reason this doesn't execute the intended ChangeLog generation at the 
actual packaging time, we won't notice it here at all :-(

 3: Modify the ChangeLog rule so that it doesn't depend on any other file 
anymore, hence the packager need to remember to run it manually before 
running "make dist". However, yet another extra step is just prone to be 
forgotten :-(

I'd propose #1 or #2. Other ideas?

Christian