Re: [gentoo-dev] updated gentoolkit with echangelog modification

[Nicholas Wourms <dragon@gentoo.org>]

Daniel Armyr wrote:
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> | I don't think this is appropriate for -dev, but since you started it
> | here, I'm going to comment.
> 
> Oh, so is this one of those "98% of the discussions held on -core are
> not interesting"?

Frankly, I found the signal->noise ratio to be quite 
unacceptable.  The volume was way to high to be able to 
sensibly keep up with discussions.  Too much stuff which 
belonged on other lists was discussed here instead of 
development.  Also, I was concerned that this might not be 
appropriate to discuss here since the decision was made by 
my superiors and without any prior notice.  I was worried 
that bringing this up here would be overstepping my bounds. 
  However, I agree with Aron that community feedback would 
be useful.

> |Why are you doing this?  Sanctioned or not,
> | the "old" way was never enforced, and not clearly stated as policy in
> | the developer's handbook.  Also, many prefer the new way.  Let's
> | consider this:
> 
> What about
> ~
> ***************************************************************************
> ~  THIS IS IMPORTANT: The ChangeLog format is a *chronological* account
> ~  of all changes made to a set of ebuilds. That means that the 
> most        
> recent ChangeLog entry *always* goes at the top of the file. More
> ~  explanation below.
> ***************************************************************************

Well, it's hard to explain without some background.  That 
change was only made recently (check the viewcvs history for 
that file).  This debate has been ongoing for some time now. 
  When I started, there was no official policy in the 
developer's and ebuild policy guides on the web site.  To my 
knowledge, the only place that mentions it is still only the 
skel.ChangeLog.  As was stated, it wasn't enforced and when 
I was trained, I was told to follow the format I found in 
current ebuilds.  It just so happened that I followed the 
format of the Gnome ebuilds when I first started, thus I was 
led to believe that the "new" style was the correct way to 
do things.  Later, I realized the other way, but I became 
convinced that the "new" style made more sense.  Anyway, 
that's my take...

> I normally wouldn't care, but since the topic was wildly discussed just
> a few days ago and writing proper ChangeLogs was mentioned as a must.

What defines "proper" ?  Can you provide some arguments why 
the old style is more proper then the new style?  Does it 
scale well?  Which makes more sense in the short-term until 
a more permanent, extensible format can be developed?  I'd 
like to hear your views on readability.  Sure it isn't at 
all like the GNU sanctioned change log entries, but lets not 
  do it just because it is the way the GNU people do it. 
Anyhow, comments are appreciated, and thanks for your feedback.

Cheers,
Nicholas


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