On 2017-02-12 12:48 +0000, Ian Jackson wrote: > We do not seem to have a coherent approach to how to handle > debian/changelog in trees (eg, vcs branches) which are not yet ready > for upload. > > See below two examples of things done differently. > The questions are: > > Q1. Should the suite in the changelog entry be UNRELEASED, > or the suite at which the vcs branch is targeted ? > > Q2. Should the changelog entry be finalised ? That is, should it > have an uploader name and date ? > > Q3. Should the version number be the intended next version number, > or should it be decorated with ~something ? If it should > be decorated, what should it be decorated with ? I don't have strong opinions on this, but as someone who still largely uses tarball-based processes, and git-based ones only when working with other people, there are things I feel it's vital to preserve, and things I'm very happy to see go. 1. I really dislike dch's enthusiasm for putting in 'UNRELEASED'. It gives me nothing I wanted, and just provides the opportunity to really do a final, clean, tested, build, only to find on upload that it's still marked 'UNRELASED', and I have to do the build, test, upload step again - for big packages that is a huge pain and happens way too often. I really resent that there is no way to do dch -i;dch -r in one go - the separation of these is just makework for me. I _always_ want to bump my version (dch -i) before I change _anything_ because otherwise I'll accidentally overwrite the old version on build, so can't easily make patches/check diffs. I _don't_ want to change the targetted suite from unstable very often at all. Your suggestion of putting UNRELEASED in the version rather than the suite would be a major improvement (because it's much more obvious when building/testing). So overall your proposal is an improvement on the status quo, but I really don't like the status quo much. I'd be happier if I didn't have to deal with 'UNRELEASED' at all unless I actually wanted to, so I'm not at all keen on your suggestion of making it mandatory. I wasn't aware that unfinalised changelog entries were a thing at all. In my experience if they aren't perfectly formatted (which is why I took to using dch in the first place) something will complain and you can can't build the package. They make sense to me as a concept, although I'm currently perfectly happy that the date in there tells me when I started work on this new release; that seems fair enough, but I do agree that removing them to make patch (or git) merging easier makes sense. Gratuitous changelog conflicts are annoying. > Proposal: > > * Tools which add/edit changelog change items should insist that the > changelog is unfinalised and contains ~UNRELEASED in its version. I really don't want this to be _required_. Dicking with the version is better than dicking with the suite, but I really would prefer it if the tools did neither, or could simply be asked to. I realise that I'm pushing uphill somewhat here and no-one much cares about people who still don't use git if they don't have to. But the UNRELEASED/'dch -r' thing pisses me off on a daily basis, and this seemed like the time to point out that some of us don't find it all helpful. From that POV, moving it from suite to version would definitely be less annoying. I suppose I should file a wishlist bug about dch's annoying 'UNRELEASED' behaviour, and lack of a workaround. Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM http://wookware.org/
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