Re: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs?

[Richard Stallman]

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[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > This can easily be encoded in a database table so it's searchable,
  > indexed by symbol name or file name (to build a history), etc. as part
  > of the pull request system. It can be semi-automatic: the system figures
  > out the file and symbol changes, then the developer adds the rest (and
  > the review doesn't end until this is done).

Given a program that can determine which function or entity name
to associate with each line, it would not be hard to make a list of
which entities are changed in a given patch.

Do we have such a program?  I don't know that we do.

However, determining what kind of change was made to a certain entity
in a certain patch is much harder.  Consider this:

* file.c (create_swimming_pool): New function
(modernize_building): Call it.

How would a program decide whether "Call it." is enough to say about
the change in modernize_building, or whether it is necessary to say
more?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.