Re: Strictness

[Carl Fürstenberg]

On 8/13/07, Robert Collins <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-08-11 at 22:06 +0200, Carl Fürstenberg wrote:
> > On 8/11/07, Noah Slater <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > > I think you misunderstanding me, it's the generation if the changelog
> > > > that will take too long time.
> > >
> > > Well, yes - what else could I have understood from:
> > >
> > > > That not an optimal option, as it's illogical to store those files in 
> > > > the svn.
> > >
> > > How long does it take to generate?
> > >
> >
> > it all depends on subjects connection and computer power, but for a
> > normal person, perhaps 10 min.
> >
> > I believe the ChangeLog file is a relic from the past when the
> > developers made one commit per week generally, it doesn't really fit
> > when there can be hundreds of commits per day.
>
> I disagree. In a centralised VCS sure, you can scale to 100's of commits
> a day - but in a distributed VCS - e.g. bzr, git, hg, monotone ... you
> tend to get 100's of commits on branches, and a much smaller number of
> branch merges occuring - branch merges being the point at which code
> review is done, regression tests run etc. And its entirely appropriate
> to create a human meaningful summary of the aggregate work done on that
> branch.
>
> -Rob
>
> --
> GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.
>
>

That might be true, but some projects still might not want to have a
"ChangeLog" file, mostly on the basis that it gives the tools needed.

But if we ignore the ChangeLog file for the moment, and concentrate on
some other files.

NEWS: this is one of the most empty files. As source code often are
part of a bigger "project", usually it's more logical to have news
binded to the project instead of the tar ball.

AUTHORS: This might from a legal standpoint be needed, but I would
like sometimes to merge it with COPYING to a COPYRIGHT file.

README: A really important file, I would say, in --gnu, it should
check that the file is not empty.

INSTALL: Here is the problem file with --foreign. with gnu, and
--add-missing, it will install a generic file, but for --foreign, the
upstream must craft an own, thum many chooses to add empty "gnu
required" files, just to get INSTALL to be generated.

As it is now, either you are a hardcore gnu, or a total outsider.

-- 
/Carl Fürstenberg <address@hidden>