[gentoo-dev] Re: git migration

[Steven J. Long]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 07:26:06AM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 6:18 AM, hasufell <hasufell@g.o> wrote:
> > Ulrich Mueller:
> >>
> >> ChangeLogs are aimed at users
> >
> > Did any1 ask them if they care?
> >
>
> I'm sure somebody will reply and say that they care.

Yup, mainly because of this:

> It still seems like a lot of overhead to me for a very one-off
> workflow.  Maybe if portage automatically output the relevant
> changelog entries in pretend mode we could pretend that they're news
> or something like that.

..which seems to me the job of a consuming script. We[1] present the
last entry from changelogs when, for instance, a package is coming
through as a Downgrade from emerge.

It's counter-productive to overload the plumbing layer, with porcelain.
Equally the plumbing-layer has to provide enough info for the porcelain
to make decisions. That info has to be tailored for the admin, not the
ebuild developer, eclass author, or proxy-maintainer.

It's not needed when nothing's going wrong, but when something weird is
happening, the short message usually provides assurance and/or info
on options. (see next)

> If we actually move to a model where many users actually sync their
> trees from git, then I'd expect the changelogs to be even less useful.
> After all, git will actually tell you what changed since your last
> sync.

VCS commit messages are very different to the ebuild Changelogs ime.
However if you're switching to git, have the equivalent info in git
logs, and the user has a git clone by definition, that /can/ work.

I would ask that you consider the different purpose of VCS commit
messages, vs ebuild Changelogs. The latter are terse summaries from
the admin perspective, and the former naturally tend to be more
code-oriented, especially when applied to bigger projects, and
especially with the ncremental-commit model that git fosters. (don't
rebase: just push, and use add -p if you have to break it up[2].)

Either way, I don't think the discussion about Changelogs should
*at all* affect the move to git; you can change Policy after
switching, very easily, and there will be other things to iron out
which will take much more effort, so I don't think the switch
should get sidetracked, by this or other post-switch topics raised.

You've mentioned scripts a couple of times, and wanting help with
them; can I suggest you post a (git preferably) url of something
people can see and help you with? And tell us what IRC channel,
if you prefer that to forums, or the list for code review.

#git are excellent, btw, eg if you want to rewrite emails on import,
in your case from LDAP, or get advice on large-scale deployment
from the infra side.

[1] http://weaver.gentooexperimental.org/update.html
[2] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7587838.html#7587838
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