Re: [gentoo-dev] ChangeLogs and rsync time

[Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org>]

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On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 11:25 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote: 
> > I'm also for telling the users to rsync exclude the ChangeLogs if they
> > don't want them instead of getting rid of them or crippling them.
> 
> I don't think that's really a solution. That's just a way to minimize
> what they get. If you really want to look at a solution, you should
> reduce whats actually in the changelog. All the changelogs are in CVS,
> and if someone wanted to go look back at any changes, they can either
> look at viewcvs or (hopefully soon), grab it via anoncvs. I bet you >80%
> of things in the changelogs are for things that are in the attic. I say
> we need a way to either have echangelog (or another script) to clean out
> changelog entries for things that are in the attic (and make sense to
> take out). Maybe another option would be to remove any 'version bump'
> type entries that are old as well.

OK.  I keep seeing this argument about ChangeLog stuff for ebuilds in
the Attic and I just think people might not be thinking it totally
trough.  For example, I made changes to the vmware-workstation ebuilds
to force group membership a while back because of a security bug.
However, there's been another security bug since, so those changes were
made on ebuilds now in Attic, but the change is still valid in the
current ebuilds.

I don't see a problem with removing version bump and stabilization
messages, but everything else should stay in the ChangeLog for as long
as the package is still around.

> I just don't see the point of keeping changelog entries for stuff that
> isn't even viewable in the tree anymore. We have CVS, the record will be
> there, lets use it. We can't cater to every user out there, but come up
> with a solid solution that makes sense and still gives them some form of
> ability to look back.

Because as I stated before, there are many times where the ChangeLog
entry for an older ebuild applies to the newer ones.  This is especially
true when ebuilds are simply copied for version bumps.  Removing this
information removes a lot of data.  Forcing users/developers to use CVS
makes it more of a hassle than the gains will give us.

Again, I think this is another case of us doing things that aren't
necessary rather than educating users.

I wouldn't have a problem with seeing ChangeLog in a default
RSYNC_EXCLUDES with a nice comment explaining how to get the ChangeLog
files.  This way we are removing the problem by default, educating
users, and still not removing any data or options for our users and
developers.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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