Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages

[Robert Dewar <dewar at adacore dot com>]

Eric Botcazou wrote:
> > I'd go even further, and say if the GNU coding standards say we
> > shouldn't be putting descriptions of why we are changing things in the
> > ChangeLog, than they should be changed and should be ignored on this
> > point until they do.  Pointing to them as the if they are The One True
> > Way seems very suspect to me.  After all, how else would they ever
> > improve if nobody tries anything different?
>
> The people who wrote them presumably thought about these issues, too.

Maybe so, but I guess we only have a record of what they came up
with and not why :-) :-)

In the Ada revision histories, we have always given the what-and-the-why
(and if necessary the why-not), and they have proved very helpful, I 
always found the RH's for gigi (done in the gcc style, much less helpful
because they omitted the why).

Of course you have to watch out for people forgetting that RH's never
substitute for comments, but all patches are reviewed, and if that
happens it gets fixed during the review process.
>