Here's how to not do a Changes file:
http://search.cpan.org/src/FELICITY/Mail-SpamAssassin-3.1.5/Changes
That tells me nothing about whether I want to upgrade my SpamAssassin install. :-(
Oh, look, I wrote about this before, and how great Tim Bunce's Changes files are:
Re:try the announcement mail
petdance on 2006-08-30T20:29:25
That should be included in the distro then.Re:try the announcement mail
Alias on 2006-08-30T20:31:57
I agree with Andy.
For open source software, if I want to see the subversion log, I'll just go to the public subversion and look at the real subversion log.
For the Changes file, what really matters is the human summary.
Posting it to an insiders (as in people who have previously signed up to specifically keep track of the project) is far less useful that adding it so that everyone can see it.
Re:try the announcement mail
jmason on 2006-08-30T20:51:46
Um, the announcement mail is linked from http://spamassassin.apache.org/ -- the front page of the project website. hardly an "insiders list"...
the point that it should appear in the distro, though, is well made.
FWIW, the "svn log" format Changes file that we use is indeed useful, even if that data is available from svn; assuming otherwise assumes that (a) the user can access the svn repository and is online etc, (b) the repository will always be available (what happens in 20 years time?), and (c) they know what branch the release was cut from (since obviously changes checked in on trunk are irrelevant for releases cut from a maintainance branch).
Re:try the announcement mail
Alias on 2006-08-31T01:21:30
Your point about the subtleties of the svn log are pretty reasonable.
Perhaps just putting it in something like a "svn.log" file rather than the Changes file (By convention generally for human consumption) would be better?
