Time to cull the changelog file
A while back, Alexandre promised to wipe the changelog file "when we hit 1.0 or when it hits 4 gigabytes, whichever comes first." Well, it's about time. I suggest removing all changes for entries earlier than Wine 1.0-rc1, as having it completely empty would be a bit silly. As for where to archive the old changes online, I'm not sure. Culling the changelog like this will reduce package size substantially. The text, even when compressed, is rather large. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Scott Ritchie <scott(a)open-vote.org> writes:
A while back, Alexandre promised to wipe the changelog file "when we hit 1.0 or when it hits 4 gigabytes, whichever comes first."
Well, it's about time. I suggest removing all changes for entries earlier than Wine 1.0-rc1, as having it completely empty would be a bit silly. As for where to archive the old changes online, I'm not sure.
Actually I was thinking of simply no longer maintaining a Changelog file. It made sense in the days of CVS to store changeset information, but now with git the same information and more can be retrieved trivially with git-log, and the linear log format won't work so well once we start having multiple branches. Objections? Does anybody feel a strong need for a Changelog file? -- Alexandre Julliard julliard(a)winehq.org
Ove Kaaven wrote:
Alexandre Julliard skrev:
Objections? Does anybody feel a strong need for a Changelog file?
I've used it a lot to look up when stuff might have been fixed (or broken), and in general Debian packages are expected to ship a changelog if possible.
I'm with you. However, including it with the package may not be necessary. I would include an URL in the readme and leave it at that. James McKenzie
James McKenzie skrev:
Ove Kaaven wrote:
Alexandre Julliard skrev:
Objections? Does anybody feel a strong need for a Changelog file?
I've used it a lot to look up when stuff might have been fixed (or broken), and in general Debian packages are expected to ship a changelog if possible.
I'm with you. However, including it with the package may not be necessary. I would include an URL in the readme and leave it at that.
Actually, I think I'd rather have the old changelogs in the source package and leave it at that, and just include the current changelog in the binaries. I wouldn't have anything against renaming the current changelog to ChangeLog.BETA or something and starting a new one for the 1.0 series. Or, I suppose worst case (if the changelog is dropped completely), and I don't feel like generating the log myself, I could install the ANNOUNCE file as the upstream changelog...
Ove Kaaven <ovek(a)arcticnet.no> writes:
Actually, I think I'd rather have the old changelogs in the source package and leave it at that, and just include the current changelog in the binaries.
The old changelogs certainly won't be removed.
Or, I suppose worst case (if the changelog is dropped completely), and I don't feel like generating the log myself, I could install the ANNOUNCE file as the upstream changelog...
If you want a changelog for your package all you'll have to do is something like: git-log wine-1.0.. >ChangeLog If you want it in the exact same format as the existing one you can use the cg-log script from cogito (that's what I use currently). -- Alexandre Julliard julliard(a)winehq.org
On Sat, 24 May 2008, Alexandre Julliard wrote: [...]
Actually I was thinking of simply no longer maintaining a Changelog file. It made sense in the days of CVS to store changeset information, but now with git the same information and more can be retrieved trivially with git-log, and the linear log format won't work so well once we start having multiple branches.
Objections? Does anybody feel a strong need for a Changelog file?
Users who get Wine as a precompiled package, maybe through their distribution, won't be able to easily run git-log or git-whatchanged. I know I often check the changelog in /usr/share/doc/<packagename> when I have trouble with a Debian package. So I think a changelog should still be included in the Wine packages. It does not have to, and probably shouldn't, list all changes made in the past 15 years though. I'll leave determining the best cutoff date to others. Also this could potentially be handled by the Wine packager rather than being part of the Wine sources. Finally, the individual commit messages may not be the easiest thing to understand for non-developpers either. I think this is more true of Wine than of other packages. That could argue for a changelog that's not just a collection of the commit messages. Maybe something culled from the ANNOUNCE messages, though these tend to be too terse, imho. Of course the trouble is that this would require quite a bit of work. Anyway, these were just my 2 EuroCents. -- Francois Gouget <fgouget(a)free.fr> http://fgouget.free.fr/ Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment -- Barry LePatner
participants (6)
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Alexandre Julliard -
Francois Gouget -
James McKenzie -
Ove Kaaven -
Scott Ritchie -
Stefan Dösinger