Re: [SIMPLE PATCH] {maint} Make HACKING visible to the end user

[Stefano Lattarini]

Hi Ralf.

This patch was mostly bike-shedding, so I'm ok with dropping it.
Also, for the same reason, do not feel compelled to answer this 
message.  That said...

On Wednesday 15 September 2010, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> * Stefano Lattarini wrote on Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:36:28PM CEST:
> > Since I see no reason forcing us to keep the HACKING file
> > "invisible" to the end user (not in ChangeLog, not in
> > distributed tarball, ...), I've gone ahead and written a very
> > simple patch to mke it "visible". OK for maint?
> 
> I'm not sure about this.  Several other GNU projects don't put
> their hacking guidelines in the tarball (and consequently also not
> in the change logs), may that be HACKING, README-hacking or so. 
> I'm guessing that it's mostly because describing version control
> handling doesn't make sense when you're not inside a checked-out
> tree.
But the HACKING files contains also other useful information for
someone just curious enough to peek into the source code.  Besides, I 
don't see what the point of hiding information from the final user is,
even if such user is a tarball downaloader rather than a git cloner.

> But I'm not quite sure if there are other reasons involved.
Neither am I.  What could these reasons be?
 
> All else being equal, I'd prefer being similar to other GNU
> packages.
I'd like more them being similar to use ;-)

Regards,
  Stefano