Request for feature in dchanges, &c

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

I'd like every Debian package to have a debian.Changelog file inside
the source package.  I don't think we can mandate this, but I'd like
to be able to do this in some standard format (that's human-readable
and better than the Emacs mode's results) and have dchanges build the
information into the .changes file.  This will make life easy for
package maintainers who adopt the convention.

In fact, what I'd really like is for this format to be the same as the
format that the release announcements get displayed in, so that people
will only have to see the one format.

Of course, I'd like this format to be the one I've adopted in my
packages' debian.Changelog files ...

> dpkg (1.0.17) stable+unstable; priority=LOW
  ^^^^  ^^^^^   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^           ^^^
   |      |           |                    `- Priority
   |      |           `- list of trees for package to be moved into
   |      `-- version (including revision, if applicable)
   `-- package name
> 
>   * dpkg --recursive follows symlinks (useful for devel tree).
> 
  ^^ Several lines of changes; lines may be blank, but all
     must be indented by at least 2 spaces.

>  -- Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>  Sat, 10 Feb 1996 15:58:46 +0000
  ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    |    |                                 `- Release date
    |    `- Maintainer (dchanges should use Maintainer from .deb file)
    `-- End of release entry, recognised by ` -- ' at start of line.

Bill, if I send you code for dchanges to read one of these
debian.Changelog files out of the source .tar.gz file, will you
include it ?  I'd also like to add an option to update the release
date in a given debian.Changelog file and check the version and
revision, so that `debian.rules binary' can set it right and the user
doesn't need to edit it (and so that they'll notice if they've
forgotten to update something).

I would offer to write rudimentary Emacs macros for editing these
files, but I've never written a major mode before.  As far as I can
see all that's required is
 * Set the fill-prefix to `    '.
 * Have a command to make a new release entry with no changes recorded
   yet.
 * Have a command to add a new change.
 * Have a command to update the date (much like the dchanges feature
   I'm proposing above).
 * Derive the mode from `text-mode'.

Blank lines between changes can be added by the user just hitting
`return'.

Bruce, would you like me to write a script that generates my format
from dchanges ?

Ian.