[31640] trunk/base

[James Berry]

Hi Ryan,

On Dec 2, 2007, at 3:45 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> On Nov 30, 2007, at 21:32, jmpp at macports.org wrote:
>
>> The ChangeLog was orignally meant to be a user-parsable file  
>> listing only major changes to base, so that we could
>> use it in our release process to advertise our new goodies.  
>> Unfortunately, lately it has turned into a litle bit
>> of a file tracking commits to base, with a little bit of user level  
>> information and a lot of gaps in between to
>> do either one right, bleh!
>>
>> Therefore add a real user-parsable NEWS file in which new features  
>> and bug fixes for each release will be advertised,
>> starting with the contents of 1.6.0
>>
>> Here's hoping that from now on the ChangeLog will turn into a file  
>> that truly tracks commits to base, with proper revision
>> numbers for each entry and ticket numbers in case of bug fixes,  
>> after being spared from having to remain user-parsable.
>
>
> Can't people who are interested in that kind of information just  
> read the Subversion log? I don't want to have to bother with  
> updating the ChangeLog every time I change something on base.  
> Granted, it's not that often for me. But for others who make many  
> changes on base, this would seem to be annoying.

Yes, I basically agree with you. I believe that:

	(1) The ChangeLog should be developer's best attempt to communicate  
to the outside world what's happening to base. This is often a  
somewhat different level of detail from what goes into the subversion  
commit log.

	(2) That the ChangeLog should not have too much detail, as otherwise  
it would simply replicate the svn commit log.

Juan says that he may rewrite svn log entries and/or ChangeLog entries  
into the NEWS file. I'm not sure I would have that much energy in  
building a release, and would be more apt just to rely on developer's  
summaries in the ChangeLog file.

James