ChangeLog's: do we have to?

[Alexander Monakov]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2018, Richard Kenner wrote:

> > After 20 years of hacking on GCC I feel like I have literally wasted 
> > days of my life typing out ChangeLog entries that could have easily been 
> > generated programmatically.
> > 
> > Can someone refresh my memory here, what are the remaining arguments for 
> > requiring ChangeLog entries?
> 
> I take the position that any ChangeLog entry that could have been generated
> automatically is not a good one.  Yes, the list of functions changed could
> be generated automatically. (Isn't there actually a way to do that in
> emacs?  I could have sworn I saw it, though I never used it much.)  But the
> *purpose* of the change to that function can't be generated automatically
> because the ChangeLog entry is the only place that should have that
> information.  The comments should say what a function currently does, but
> isn't the place for a history lesson.  That data belongs only in ChangeLog

GCC ChangeLogs don't record the purpose of the change. They say what changed,
but not why.

As far as I know, this ChangeLog style helped in pre-Subversion times when
source control tools tracked changes per-file, not per-tree.

Alexander