Re: Frivolity in ‘debian/changelog’

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Patrick Matthäi <pmatthaei@debian.org> writes:

> Ben Finney schrieb:
> > Out of interest (i.e. I'm not challenging you in this instance), why
> > do you dislike [smileys in changelog entries]?
>
> I think we should be a bit serious with out changelog entrys, the wide
> world is {not} reading them.

I'm confused. If you mean: “The wide world is reading them, therefore we
should be serious”, I think I understand; but I'm unclear why you put
“{not}” there and how I should read it.

Myself, I think we should be professional and clear in our changelog
entries; but I disagree that this precludes all frivolity.

> > Do you have a similar dislike of other frivolity in
> > ‘debian/changelog’, such as the various items like:
> >
> >     * The <something arbitrary here> release.
>
> Oehm no, I think you mean cuetools e.g.?

I wasn't referring to any particular package, but to the widespread
practice of arbitrarily “naming” Debian releases of packages by an entry
in the package's ‘debian/changelog’ following the above form.

    $ find /usr/share/doc/ -name 'changelog.Debian.gz' | xargs zgrep '\* The \("\|“\).* release' | wc -l
    1545

Sometimes the “name” is meaningful, but very often it is a bit of (IMO
harmless) frivolity on the part of the package maintainer. I was
wondering whether you also disapprove of these, and if so, why.

-- 
 \     “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that |
  `\      divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of |
_o__)            being correct.” —Niels Bohr (to Wolfgang Pauli), 1958 |
Ben Finney