Re: [gentoo-dev] [git migration] The problem of ChangeLog generation

[Fabian Groffen]

On 06-04-2010 07:43:02 +0530, Nirbheek Chauhan wrote:
> * It makes zero sense to manually manage ChangeLogs in git[1]
>   - Irritating conflicts while merging branches or remote master
>     + Similar argument for having only distfile manifests; but I digress...
>   - Duplication of effort and information
>   - Saves space for local checkouts

This seems to assume
a) that we will do branches, and
b) that those branches somehow are official and in use

In CVS we are not allowed to use branches, as a policy, that somehow
makes sense.  Our stable tree is visible via keywords instead.

Why would we suddenly do branches?  It still isn't a good thing.  If you
talk about branches in the sense of a clone of the entire repo, why
would we suddenly do massive concurrent development on the same ebuilds?

I can tell you from good experience that you only do such things if you
really have to, e.g. when you are in an overlay that needs to have
modifications to nearly everything and you try to keep that overlay
up-to-date with its origin, gentoo-x86.  It's no fun, because it
conflicts pretty much on lots of things, not ChangeLogs.

It seems to me, that if you are in a clone working on something, you
just only write the ChangeLog once you merge it with its origin,
gentoo-x86.  You have to review what happened at that stage anyway.

If you really have lots of changes, you will find that many commits on
the other side will cause you conflicts, so the ChangeLog is just a very
small part of it.  Conclusion, if you can, try hard to keep your changes
minimal, and preferably zero compared to the origin, gentoo-x86.


-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo on a different level