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

[Diego Elio Pettenò]

On 29 October 2014 22:39, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> [we tend to avoid top-posting on technical lists]


Sorry, me sleepy and not paying enough attention.

>
> > Can't we just say that gnu-flavour automake is pointless and foreign should
> > be the default? Or am I too opinionated on that?
>
> For GNU projects, the 'gnu' flavor still makes sense, even if it could
> use a little modernization such as easier automation of generating
> ChangeLog from version control.  And while these days, automake is
> probably used by more non-gnu projects (where 'foreign' may make more
> sense) than GNU projects, that's still not a good reason to toggle the
> default.  I like what the GNU Coding Standards represent, and deviating
> from them deserves a mention in configure.ac to make it apparent that
> you thought about it.


All good and well, but then I may have misunderstood Arne's original
point. If he's trying to get the GNU style to be "good enough" for
more projects, I think that's a moot point because as you said most
projects use it outside of GNU, and they would probably still find
enough issues with it that they wouldn't use it — and they would
probably still complain about bad autotools doing bad things because
they copy-paste from the wrong project.

If we're talking of making life easier for GNU maintainers, I have no
opinion because I have no stakes on the matter at all.

Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes
address@hidden — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/