ChangeLog and NEWS file (Re: [31640] trunk/base)

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

On Dec 1, 2007, at 4:53 AM, Randall Wood wrote:

> Is there any reason the ChangeLog can not be automatically generated  
> from the SVN commit messages?


	First off, an entry in the ChangeLog does not need to fully mirror  
its corresponding commit log. If the latter is small, like a one liner  
comment, then it surely could, that wouldn't be a bad thing; but in  
the other case, when a commit log is a detailed explanation of what  
was fixed and how (as commit logs should really be), then duplicating  
all that information in the ChangeLog would be completely overkill, in  
my opinion. That's the reason why I'm requesting entries in the  
ChangeLog be made full with svn revision and ticket number (if any)  
references, so that they can be regarded as "summaries that point  
interested parties to further information", short of telling them "run  
'svn log' on base and spend hours in there to become acquainted with  
what has changed  and how" (sounds live I've been there...? ;-).

	But that put aside, do you have any suggestions for auto-generation  
of the ChangeLog off of the commit log? The only thing that comes to  
mind is a post-commit hook of some kind that prepends the log of  
particular revisions to the ChangeLog and then in turn commits that  
change, which in my opinion is also unnecessarily overkill (you would  
have to handle infinite loops and other corner cases). The only other  
thing I can think of is... manually making an entry for your commit ;-)

	Regards,...


-jmpp