Re: Optional %changelog (was: F38 proposal: Rpmautospec by Default (System-Wide Change proposal))
On Mon, Oct 23, 2023 at 11:05 PM Maxwell G <maxwell(a)gtmx.me> wrote:
I'll bite :). I changed the subject accordingly.
On Tue Oct 24, 2023 at 00:31 +0200, Pavel Raiskup wrote:
> Packaging become an automatized task, and maintainers don't pay
> attention to %changelog beauty so they simply generate it from git-log
> (but I'd claim that git-log != %changelog).
I tend to agree. A package's git log and %changelog have different
purposes and cater to different audiences. The former focusses on
developers. Each commit should each contain a single logical change to
the code in distgit (specfile/patches/sources) with body text to justify
the change as appropriate. The %changelog is a user-visible summary that
should only mention user-visible changes and not have extra information
related to the development itself. For simpler packages, combining these
two logs via rpmautospec (with the ability to [skip changelog] commits)
can work well, but in other cases, including every single commit message
can create a %changelog full of garbage or otherwise confuse packagers.
> %changelog become one of the most painful maintainers' headache :)
>
> What do you think about a static changelog like:
>
> %changelog
> * See https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/<PKG>/commits/rawhide
>
> Aren't we ready to admit (something like) this is enough?
The %changelog is supposed to follow a specific format, as per the
guidelines, and the datestamps are used to set $SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.
Replacing the entire changelog with this type of text would break that,
and I think having a (potentially flawed) %changelog generated from the
git log is better than none at all.
I'm also generally opposed to dropping the changelog since it is the
main method of providing attribution to all contributors past and
present to a package when it is redistributed, especially over the
mirror networks, ISOs, etc.
Remember that our version control system *does not matter* because
it's not how sources are *actually* delivered. That's the SRPMs that
are built and shipped alongside the binary packages.
--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!