Re: OT: ChangeLog stylistics

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

> I prefer to use the active voice (and present, not past) in ChangeLog
> entries.

actually, I prefer it, too.  It's just that when someone told me to use the
past tense, I found his reasons stronger than mine.  But I continued to use
the imperatives, anyway.

> The same goes for comments in code, of course.

Whn you write:

        /* Compute the multiple. */
        cents = 100 * dollars;

it's clear it's an imperative.  (C is an imperative language, after all,
and comments are the same, just on a higher level.)

> In some respects,
> ChangeLog entries are comments on the development process, so they are
> analogous to code comments.

Oh, thank you.  That's the origin and the reason I was searching for.
One might think that it's a ``log'', with records of what was done.
But not, it an ``analogy'' to code.  ;-)

> FWIW, that has been the `standard' in coreutils since day 1.

As I said above, I prefer the ``imperative'' style, too.

> ... -- it's not that big a deal, after all.

Exactly.

Thank you Jim for your comments, t helped me to understand the motives
behind it.

Have a nice day,
        Stepan