Re: huge ChangeLog files

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On , September 7, 2001 at 16:06:38 (-0400), Sam Steingold wrote: ]
> Subject: huge ChangeLog files 
>
> while ChangeLog files can be generated from the CVS, some projects keep
> a separate ChangeLog file under the CVS too.

Which is pretty stupid, but then CVS itself is in that class of project....

> E.g., in CLISP (http://clisp.cons.org) src/ChangeLog is 12000 lines,
> 500kB and at version 1.1140 now.
> 
> How do people handle things like this?

Why not just split it into manageable chunks?  It's easy enough to write
an awk/sed/perl/python/ruby/etc. script to split a large ChangeLog file
either on date intervals (or on the nearest KB or line or whatever)
between two entries.

> I thought of renaming the current ChangeLog to ChangeLog.1 and
> truncating the original ChangeLog to zero size (and checking the empty
> ChangeLog under revision 2.0).

That'll work too, but it is very silly to store ChangeLog information in
CVS.  Much better to use "rcs2log" to generate it after you've cut a
release (if you really do believe it's necessary to ship a ChangeLog
file -- many people don't think it is).  Then you can split the
resulting file as you please.

> If CVS supported file renames, like RCS does, I would have renamed
> ChangeLog,v to ChangeLog.1,v and were done with it...

CVS does support file renames -- through the traditional and very simple
"add/delete" paradigm.  "cvs add" the new file, and "cvs rm" the old
one.  Nothing's lost and if you do the commit of the old and new names
simultaneously and give a decently meaningful log message a relevant
audit trail of the ``rename'' is even created!

RCS does not support file renames -- any attempt to rename a ,v file
will always destroy your ability to retrieve past releases.  Heck RCS is
a one-file-at-a-time tool so even considering the concept of file
renames is totally foreign to it!

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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