Time to cull the changelog file

[Scott Ritchie]

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

[Alexandre Julliard]

Scott Ritchie  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?

[Stefan Dösinger]

Am Samstag, 24. Mai 2008 12:19:22 schrieb Alexandre Julliard:
> Objections?  Does anybody feel a strong need for a Changelog file?

I'd say kill the changelog. I think I've never opened this file in my 4 years 
I've been messing with wine

[Ove Kaaven]

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.

[James McKenzie]

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

[Ove Kaaven]

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...

[Alexandre Julliard]

Ove Kaaven  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).

[Francois Gouget]

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.