[gentoo-dev] generating ChangeLog files automatically from `cvs commit`

[Mike Frysinger]

suggestion:
stop keeping ChangeLog files in CVS and instead, let them be generated 
automagically by the cvs server using the last <arbitrary number> of commit 
messages.  if you really want to keep a commit message out of the changelog, 
then we come up with a simple policy of prefixing the message with a period 
(to keep it hidden :P).

logic:
 - i'm lazy
 - i hate typing the samething twice (yes, bash scripting with echangelog can 
kind of take care of this) ... it doesnt handle if you want to use different 
commit messages for different files
 - shrinks ChangeLog size for packages which have been around a very long time
 - forces cvs log messages to actually be worthwhile to read and makes 
browsing cvs history much nicer (it's very easy to look at the differences 
between two files and match up a good commit message rather than trying to 
figure out what message in the ChangeLog goes with it, assuming there is one)
 - easily standardize ChangeLog format wrt to header, copyrights, licensing, 
message formatting, name/date format
 - generate dates in UTC down to the second rather than having devs hand type 
them in their local timezone for just the current day
 - maybe some other things i havent thought of
 - i'm lazy
-mike
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