commit IDs in changelog messsages

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Sat, Nov 15 2008, martin f krafft wrote:

> also sprach Petr Baudis <pasky at ucw.cz> [2008.11.14.1301 +0100]:
>> > In the long run, I really want to supersede "Closes:" anyway.
>> > Ideally, the bug gets marked 'fix-committed' when a signed-off
>> > commit closing the bug hits the repo (or a tag like
>> > closes-123456 appears), and an upload would identify bugs closed
>> > between the last upload and this one, using the repo and those
>> > commit IDs, and then selectively close those bugs.
>> 
>> Then why do you actually keep the changelog? Usually about 50% of
>> the times when I look at it is when I need to check "when was bug
>> X fixed?".
>
> The changelog
>
>   (a) serves the data about which bug-closing-commits are actually
>   part of the package that is being uploaded to the archive
>   software, so that it can close the corresponding reports in the
>   BTS
>
>   (b) provides the information needed to answer questions such as
>   yours to the user from a file in the package itself without
>   requiring the user to go online or know the VCS
>
>   (c) selects only the relevant commits, e.g. it wouldn't contain
>   a commit "fix typo in last commit".

        I think you are missing the apt-listchanges audience (should I
 upgrade to this version of the package?). Also, the user looking for
 when a user visible change happened in /usr/share/doc/foo/. I looked
 recently to see when po4a started taking --previous as an option, for
 instance.

        So the BTS and users are the consumers of the
 changelog. developers are the consumers of the commit log. 

        manoj
-- 
Air pollution is really making us pay through the nose.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta at acm.org> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>  
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