Re: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs?

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> More generally, there's no way Git could replace ChangeLog style entries,
> because they frequently include information that is not in the diffs. To say
> nothing of the fact that understanding the change from reading Diff hunks is
> much harder, and therefore much less efficient, than from reading a log
> entry which describes the change in plain English.

I'm not saying that commit log entries are not necessary. Having a richly
verbose description of a change is always good. I'm just saying that enforcing
ChangeLog structure is orthogonal.

>> I've never missed not having that ChangeLog data in other projects, of any
>> size.

> Maybe you rarely need to do any forensics. Me, I do it all the time in
> Emacs, and ChangeLog files are a valuable tool in the chest.

I do deep forensics in other projects all the time. I've never noticed having
or not having a ChangeLog as bearing much on the ease of doing so. What
matters more is how well documented a commit is, and how well each commit
sticks to doing just one thing.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2