Re: A request: Moving away from ChangeLog

[Bernt Hansen <bernt@norang.ca>]

John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:

> On May 21, 2010, at 9:47 AM, Tassilo Horn wrote:
>
>> I think it would be better if line 3+ would be exact ChangeLog entries
>> format-wise, so that you can still use emacs' ChangeLog facilities
>> (`add-change-log-entry').  I don't really want to write the changed file
>> and function names on my own, and adding them correctly is exactly what
>> that function does very well.
>
> This ends up looking rather ugly in the history, and I would hate to
> see VCS history bent merely to conform to tools usage.
>
> Rather, the history should be as clean and exact as possible.  If
> elisp functions need to be written to convert ChangeLog entries to a
> suitable format, I can do that.
>
> Also, in magit if you press 'C' on any diff hunk, it auto-generates a
> properly formatted ChangeLog-style comment into the current commit
> log.

I also prefer descriptive and succinct commit messages.

It should be possible to automatically retrieve function information and
other items from the source based on hunk line information and the
source code in a tool that builds the Changelog.

I make most of my git commits (including org-mode) in vim which is
kicked off from raw command-line git.  I normally make multiple changes
at once and then build separate commits by using git's editing hunk
features from 'git add -p'.  I don't think that functionality is
available in magit yet.

Requiring an elisp-only solution for making commits isn't ideal -- the
tools should be as flexible as possible.

I have no issue with the maintainers rejecting patches and requesting
changes to the commit messages so that they can be applied to the
project but I wouldn't want to require the use of a specific tool to do
the job.

Regards,
Bernt