Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling
On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 06:56:53PM -0800, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Josh Triplett wrote:
> > On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 00:04:20 +0100 Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> wrote:
>
> >> The fact that some upstream do not bother to ship useful changelog does
> >> not mean that all changelog are useless, and by removing them we
> >> discourage upstream of producing useful changelog.
> >
> > I sincerely hope so. Convincing upstreams to "git rm ChangeLog" becomes
> > much easier the more widespread existing practice we can point to.
> > Having a ChangeLog file in version control is actively detrimental.
>
> I agree with you about GNU-style changelogs. But I don't think I've
> seen those much outside of GNU packages.
I still see them in some other packages that started out pre-git, where
nobody quite felt empowered to delete the changelog.
> How do you feel about generated changelogs in release tarballs that
> are generated by tools like "git log"?
As long as they're completely autogenerated, they don't do any harm. I'd
sooner not ship them at all and just say "see the git repository", but
if you have to have one then autogenerate it.
> I also use NEWS.Debian for notes about incompatibilities that will
> affect sysadmins upgrading.
NEWS.Debian is *absolutely* valuable.
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