Re: CAN to CVE: changing changelogs?
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> writes:
> > But at least we know that this subthread can end right here, right now. It
> > is useless to discuss beliefs that exist without a technical backing, and I
> > won't waste my time with it.
>
> Do you have a technical backing for your view that it is useless to
> discuss beliefs that one?
Parse error: "... that one?" I am sorry, I am not sure I understood what
you mean. IF I got it right, my reply is simple: I will not change my mind
about a technical matter backed by technical reasons, because of the beliefs
of someone else. Give me technical reasons, and I will listen and I could
be convinced that I am wrong.
Therefore, I will not waste my time with any thread where I ask for
technical reasons and get an ideologic one as a reply. And I won't waste my
time arguing for the sake of arguing, either.
As for the technical reasons to update and modify past entries in a
changelog, I can name a few without any effort:
1. Fixing typos do not change the message. If it does, it is not
a simple typo. Typos can cause a grep for information to
fail, thus they are not always harmless. Typos distract me,
therefore I fix them on *my* changelogs when I notice them,
so that they won't distract me ever again.
2. By properly updating/fixing closes: entries, one can always
machine-parse the changelog to locate exactly when a bug was
fixed. I can use this to feed the new version-aware BTS with
missing versioning information, for example, if I need/want
to.
Also, by adding the proper closes: entries in the changelog,
now I have a link to the BTS entry that is related to that
changelog entry. This data is extremely useful when you
are hunting the reasons for a particular change down.
3. The security team's work is helped by adding the CVE
information to the proper changelog entry, to the point that
they have requested everyone to do so. This requires editing
past changelog entries quite often.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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