Re: Git migration docs

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 11:16 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 14:38 -0500, Kristian Høgsberg wrote:
> >> I don't see many references or much reasoning here, just assertions.
> >> How is it not possible for a disciplined developer, who's trained to
> >> commit small, self contained changes and document them in a ChangeLog to
> >> apply that same discipline to writing a good commit message instead?
> >> Look to the kernel, cairo, the X.org modules for examples of projects
> >> that successfully use the VCS commit messages and no ChangeLog.  I don't
> >> think it's justified or necessary to call the people who work on these
> >> projects lazy and selfish.
> >
> > No, those projects don't write good-enough commit messages and their
> > generated ChangeLogs are not good enough. The routine has made people
> > lazy and allowed them to be selfish. Of course there are plenty of
> > projects that are far worse, regardless of use of git.
> >
> > Here's a URL of a good-enough ChangeLog:
> > http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gtk%2B/trunk/ChangeLog?view=markup
> >
> > I don't think you can provide a URL of a generated-from-commit-messages
> > ChangeLog that is good enough, though people often asserts that one
> > exists, and the tools cannot tell me what a human being told me in a
> > good ChangeLog, because the tools cannot read minds.
> 
> This is just FUD. Here is a counter examples of a changelog which is
> generated from commit messages[1]

Below is a snippet of that Changelog (which is annoyingly in a tarball
instead of at an actual URL). Surely you can see how that's less useful,
and less readable, than the GTK+ ChangeLog?

To spell it out, it doesn't mention what was changed in what part
(usually, what function) in what file, and why. You might not find that
useful, but I do, and it's our de-facto convention.

Some of the commits also don't mention real develoer names. I also find
that information useful.


"
commit fcb0a022d48b7bd64779ecfc6e3d304acf1bb9de
Author: Christian Persch <chpe gnome org>
Date:   Wed Nov 26 14:16:00 2008 +0100

    Re-dist with libtool 2.

 configure.ac |   27 +--------------------------
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 26 deletions(-)

commit e49b9ceb66587e6854ab302c86e118f28f1c27f2
Author: chpe <chpe 51c929da-ce25-0410-94ab-cff1d2748b70>
Date:   Mon Nov 24 17:37:54 2008 +0000

    Version 2.24.2
    
    git-svn-id: svn
+ssh://svn.gnome.org/svn/epiphany/branches/gnome-2-24 8612
51c929da-ce25-0410-94ab-cff1d2748b70

 configure.ac |    2 +-
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

commit d4936b5266812805d3ca59059c9a35c10b15e478
Author: chpe <chpe 51c929da-ce25-0410-94ab-cff1d2748b70>
Date:   Mon Nov 24 17:37:49 2008 +0000

    Restore the original state on this file. DO NOT CHANGE THIS
FILE!    
"


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