[gentoo-dev] Re: ChangeLog

[Duncan]

Patrick Lauer posted on Sun, 01 Nov 2015 13:16:31 +0100 as excerpted:

> I'm getting mildly very irritated with the lack of easily accessible
> ChangeLogs for our packages.
>
> Apparently updating them stopped some time in August, so now there are
> some outdated ChangeLogs that don't really serve any purpose, and the
> easiest way for users to figure out why something changed is to yell at
> the clumsy gitweb.g.o interface. So instead of grep we now need lots of
> patience.
>
> This does not look reasonable to me.
>
> Can we please either properly remove ChangeLogs and tell people to not
> be curious about changes, or make them useful again?

++

I got irritated with that within a week of the git switch, and pretty 
quickly switched to the github mirror with pregenerated metadata.

That gives me the git log, which is perfectly fine by me. =:^)

But, that's not at all suitable for the general user.

For one thing, while one would hope that github should have no problem 
with the traffic, there's little question that recommending that as the 
general gentoo-wide solution runs headlong into the social-contract issue 
currently being debated on the NFP list.  While simply taking commits via 
github from users who want to use it for that is one thing (and fine by 
me, I'm not /that/ extreme, as long as the proprietary method doesn't 
come to be favored), having pretty much the entire userbase syncing from 
it would be pretty hard *not* to call a "dependency", and thus a 
violation of the contract.

Which means the generally recommended sync method really needs to stay on 
gentoo infrastructure, or at least with direct gentoo volunteer hosts, 
tho some may be hosting on proprietary platforms.


Personally, I'd love the primary sync method to be git, and the primary 
change logs conveyed via native git log methods, but in ordered to do 
that, all those rsync mirrors need to switch to git mirrors.

Meanwhile, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, git syncing simply 
won't work under some circumstances, as it's all or nothing, and for some 
people the connection simply isn't stable enough to get all, so it ends 
up being nothing.  

But as long as webrsync continues to work, and assuming it can be 
incrementally fetched/resumed, that should be a sufficient solution for 
them, so again, rsync isn't really necessary.  And for those users, if 
they do need to check the changelog, the packages.gentoo.org method, 
following the link to the git log if necessary, should be fine.


But clearly, something needs to change.  Either the changelogs need to be 
fixed to be generated again, or the old ones need removed, with people 
not using git pointed at packages.gentoo.org as mentioned.  If the 
general rsync mirrors are eventually switched to git, with webrsync 
remaining for those who can't do git, great, but meanwhile, I know if I 
were still on rsync (or webrsync), I'd be raising hell about the lack of 
changelogs well before now, and the github mirror I'm actually using 
clearly isn't suited as general gentoo user solution because it /would/ 
then be a gentoo dependency and thus a violation of the social contract, 
so I'm definitely with Patrick on this one.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman