Re: Modifications of the changelog.
* Arno Töll <arno@debian.org> [120421 11:51]:
> The whole point of a changelog is a time dependent frozen point of view
> at your package. Once you released a version of a package, you should
> consider it untouchable
I strongly disagree. First of all, a changelog is there to see what has
changed when, i.e. it is a documentation of what important changed where
done and when (i.e. which package version) they were done for.
There is normally no reason to change older entries as most details get
less important over time, but if there is anything importing misleading
in them, something important incorrect or something important enough
missing, then not correcting the changelog is not acceptable in my eyes.
The new changelog should be about what was changed since the version
before (that might be some hint that the older changelog was corrected
if you prefer), but import changes in the old package should be in the
part of the changelog for the old package.
> as it would confuse people _a lot_ if you force
> them to read a full backlog of changes every time they upgrade because
> you /could/ have modified more than the latest entry.
Exactly the opposite is true in my opinion: If you already have the last
package, then the new changelog entry should only contain the changes
since then. But if you forgot to mention an important enough change in
an older version, and so not advertise that change there, then people
might use the wrong version because they get the wrong picture of where
which change was done. (When considering switching from package version
A to version B, it should be enough to read the the changelog entries
> A and <= B).
> Generally speaking it may be ok-ish in important cases to change
> previous entry if you restrict yourself to spelling fixes and formating
> changes, but it is completely unacceptable [to me, at least] to
> reformulate entries, add entries, remove entries and such.
If an old entry contains wrong information (either things claimed that
are not true, or changes missing that might be important, or
worded in a way that people to misunderstand) that is about things
important enough that a user could be mislead, I'd rather
consider it unacceptable to keep the wrong claims or omissions there.
There are of course several reason why not modifying old changelogs or
rather erring towards not changing it when being unsure is a good idea:
- the changelog format attributes each part of a changelog to a person.
So modifying them should make sure one does not misrepresent those
changes to changelog. (and if a change is small enough that making
that clear would make it harder to read usually means it was not
important enough to change it anyway).
- any change can introduce new bugs, even in documentation. If the
changelog was from someone else (or from yourself from long enough
ago), one should be sure enough about what one does.
(For the thing triggering this whole discussion: That appears to be
simply some needless contentless change in a NMU not related to the NMU,
so is quite unrelated to the "is editing old changelogs acceptable"
discussion.)
Bernhard R. Link
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