Re: Auto-Generating ChangeLog and AUTHORS for projects in a version tracking system?

[Eric Blake]

On 10/29/2014 02:37 AM, Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK) wrote:
> Dear GNU Hackers,
> 
> 
> In quite a few guides I saw people suggest using the foreign autoconf
> style to avoid having to create the required text files.

s/foreign autoconf/foreign automake/

Not necessary.  Coreutils is an example project that uses the standard
gnu level rather than the weaker foreign level, while still using a
ChangeLog generated from git rather than maintained by hand.  It uses
the gnulib script build-aux/gitlog-to-changelog to create the real
ChangeLog at 'make dist' time, plus a bootstrap script that does 'touch
ChangeLog' prior to calling automake, to keep automake happy for
developers.  The gitlog-to-changelog script also includes a mechanism
for touching up mistakes in the git log (such as spelling corrections or
incorrect attributions) so that you don't have to rewrite git history to
make corrections.  It also has rules for generating THANKS (rather than
AUTHORS) from git history.

> 
> If autotools did this automatically, the barrier for using GNU style in
> the autotools with a version tracking system would be much smaller: Just
> write README and NEWS.

autoconf can't do this automatically, but gnulib can.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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