Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling
On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 00:04:20 +0100 Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> wrote:
> Both the content and the name of the upstream changelogs is an upstream
> issue. The fact that a file is named by upstream Changelog instead of
> NEWS does not imply anything on its usefulness. It might even happen
> that NEWS is the real changelog.
That's certainly possible, though not a particularly good or
conventional practice. But using NEWS for user-visible release notes
rather than a full source-code changelog seems a sufficiently common
practice to make it the default assumption, which a source package could
override if necessary.
> 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 would go so far as to say that I hope we one day stop shipping
a non-generated debian/changelog in source packages, because it incurs
all the same pain.
Now, a NEWS file or similar, containing user-visible *release notes* and
similar highlights, would most certainly be useful. I would love to see
*more* upstreams providing files like those. But those certainly aren't
changelogs.
- Josh Triplett
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