[Pm-utils] [PATCH 1/1] Generate ChangeLog on demand.

[Victor Lowther]

On Thu, Mar 06, 2008 at 06:55:00PM -0600, Victor Lowther wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 06, 2008 at 09:55:12AM -0800, Dan Nicholson wrote:
> > 
> > 1. I'm using git-1.5.3.x and it doesn't have --topo-order. I also
> > don't know when --no-merges was added.
> 
> --topo-order was added in the 1.5.4 series, apparently. Omitting it is
> no big deal -- it just orders the changelog entries to reflect the
> logical order they were applied in instead of being in strict reverse
> chronological order.
> 
> I included --no-merges because most of my local workflow involves
> approx. 1 branch per crazy idea or bugfix, and merging them into master
> when I get ready to push chages upstream.  Getting rid of the switch is 
> also not a problem, it will just introduce more noise into the ChangeLog.

After a bit more reading, some of that noise can also be alleviated by
merging with --squash whenever I intend to push something upstream.
  
> > 2. You need to specify where the .git directory is so this will work
> > when srcdir != builddir. If you have an up to date ChangeLog in the
> > srcdir, you won't see this issue, but it does exist. So:
> > 
> >   git --git-dir=$(srcdir)/.git log ...
> > 
> > Newer git will manage to search up the directory chain to find a .git
> > directory if builddir is a subdirectory of srcdir, but it's just safer
> > to specify exactly where it is.
> 
> Good idea.  The version I end up pushing will have this change.
> 
> > 3. Please don't silence the make output. It only serves to make
> > debugging issues more difficult. If people don't want to see the
> > commands, they can just redirect to /dev/null.
> 
> OK.
> 
> > 4. We need to be smarter than using - for handling errors. It would
> > really suck to end up with an empty ChangeLog in a released tarball.
> > Personally, I would just drop the - and make it stop if the git-log
> > failed for any reason. Here's what they do in Xorg, which is more
> > robust, but may be overkill (this has come up repeatedly since they
> > started generating the ChangeLog):
> > 
> > http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/util/macros/tree/Makefile.am
> 
> That does seem a little baroque.  I think I will go with the "failure
> kills the make" option for now. :)

Also, pushed upstream with these changes.

> > --
> > Dan
> 
> -- 
> Victor Lowther
> Ubuntu Certified Professional

-- 
Victor Lowther
Ubuntu Certified Professional