ChangeLogs (was: Re: [changeset] don't remove whitespace within @example in docstrings)

[Thomas Weber]

On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 11:23:23AM -0600, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> 2009/1/5 John W. Eaton <jwe at octave.org>:
> > Or, we should simply decide to do away with ChangeLog files entirely.
> 
> Please don't... I like the Changelogs, since they're the only unbroken
> breadcrumb trail we have for Octave. If in a couple of years from now
> you decide that hg isn't doing the job anymore like CVS wasn't, then
> we'd lose the project's history when you switch VCS.

You should have more trust in current conversion tools. I'm pretty sure
you can switch between at least Mercurial and Git without loosing
anything.

With distributed VCS, the importance of Changelogs has diminished. 

> It's a pity that Changelogs are human-generated instead of
> machine-generated, since that introduces some human error... of course
> Emacs, has a Changelog mode. :-) Do other editors have similar modes
> too?

Generating changelogs with Mercurial isn't difficult, just try
	hg log --limit 2 --style=changelog
in Octave's directory. Adding something like this to 'make dist' hook
wouldn't be that much work.

	Thomas