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Re: Horrific new levels of changelog abuse



On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 03:28:05PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 09:07:23PM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> > > There have been many instances where a changelog entry says "fixed by
> > > the upstream" and I could not for the life of me find out how in their
> > > changelog.
> > Therein lies the problem.
> > As far as the BTS is concerned, it is irrelevant how a bug is fixed.
> And as far as most Debian users are concerned, it is not.
> The BTS exists to handle bugs because of the users, not the other way around.
> What exactly is so problematic about respecting users' wishes in this regard?

Huh?

A changelog is to document changes, eg:

	* New upstream version
	   - foo widget is no longer upside-down
	   - --colour argument now spelt correctly
	* Added Latin debconf templates

This isn't anything to do with "users' wishes", or the mechanics of
anything, it's just basic engineering practice of noting down what
important changes have been made. The only way that it's got anything to
do with our users is that most of our users happen to have an engineering
mindset, and find those sorts of notes useful.

Allowing you to close bugs by *annotating* your changelog is a nice
feature, but it doesn't change the point of the changelog. If you'd
write your changelog differently if you couldn't use the "Closes: #nnnn"
notation, you're doing something wrong.

	* New upstream version
	   - foo widget is no longer upside-down (Closes: Bug#123456)
	   - --colour argument now spelt correctly (Closes: Bug#123457)
	* Added Latin debconf templates (Closes: Bug#123458)

What's so confusing about this?

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

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