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On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Stuart Herbert wrote: |
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> On Wednesday 21 July 2004 13:58, Toby Dickenson wrote: |
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> > No need for imagination here.... you can do much of that today with: |
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> > |
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> > emerge --changelog -p -u world |
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> |
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> An XML-based ChangeLog adds semantic meaning, making it much more useful. |
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> It's not too difficult for (most ;-) humans to make sense of our current |
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> ChangeLogs, but tools are always going to be limited in accuracy and |
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> capability. |
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> |
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> There's also the added side-effect that it would make validating the ChangeLog |
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> very straight forward through a simple XML Schema. |
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I personally would very much like to leave ChangeLogs as they are. We |
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already have tools to make sure they are in the right format (though |
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repoman doesn't check for it and yes developers can choose not to use |
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these tools). I think changing them over to XML would be |
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more overhead in file size and in required tools to parse them than is |
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really necessary. If the problem is that people can't follow directions, |
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then don't punish those of us who do. |
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Additionally XML is not (despite what many developers may think) easily |
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human readable to those who don't understand how markup languages |
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generically work. And even to some of us that know how, it's still (for |
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lack of a better phrase) a royal PITA. |
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While if this was solely a community of developers or technically savvy |
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people, then perhaps using XML-based ChangeLogs would be OK. However |
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it isn't and I think that would be a poor assumption on our part. Yes |
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you could make a tool to make it human readable, but again that's more |
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overhead you do not need if you can get developers to correctly input |
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their ChangeLog entries now. |
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Considering the file "ChangeLog" in an of itself is almost an unofficial |
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standard that assumes a plain text document, should such a decision be |
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made to go with XML-based ChangeLogs, perhaps we should give them another |
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name. |
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But yeah, that's my $0.02/rant 'n' rave. |
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- -- |
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Jason Wever |
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Gentoo/Sparc Co-Team Lead |
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-- |
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