changelog format

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 10:26 -1000, David Cantrell wrote:
> On 04/20/2009 10:21 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 23:32 +0200, Björn Persson wrote:
> >> I gather I'm expected to write the changelog in a spec file by hand.
> >
> > Why is this, BTW? Is there a reason we don't just generate it from CVS
> > commit messages, beyond "no-one's had time / inclination to implement
> > it"?
> 
> Because there's no forced standard for CVS commit messages.  Plus, each 
> CVS commit in pkgcvs does not necessarily equal a new release or version 
> increment in the package.  At least that's not how I use pkgcvs.

It doesn't have to - you can generate the changelog as part of the
package submission process, containing all the commit messages since the
last package build.

> I view the RPM changelog as mostly fluff for end-user consumption.  We 
> [the packagers] can summarize the main points of that release, note bug 
> numbers addressed, and other major points for that iteration of the package.

You can have a keyword that you put in CVS commit messages that
suppresses them from being added to the RPM changelog, if they wouldn't
be useful in that context (like "rebuilt with no changes for some
procedural reason").

(The win of doing things this way, btw, is that it saves maintainers
time and effort, reduces errors introduced by the manual creation of
what should be boilerplate content, and makes it less likely that
important information will be left out of RPM changelogs, since you have
to have a commit message and most developers habitually write useful
ones).
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net