[webkit-dev] I *HATE* CHANGELOGS!!!

[Jeremy Orlow]

I HATE them as well.

We've talked about this before:
http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2009-July/thread.html#8693
There are clearly some people who find them useful to the extent that
their productivity would decrease.  We talked about some other solutions
which would keep their work flow mostly intact.
I think it really comes down to this, though:  Is the productivity boost of
these developers worth the cost of the decrease in productivity of the rest
of us?

J

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:37 PM, David Hyatt <hyatt at apple.com> wrote:

> If the files could just merge properly, I would not be so annoyed, but the
> fact that you basically have to re-resolve conflicts every time anyone beats
> you to a checkin is just horrible.  Surely other people run into this.  It
> wastes time for me on practically every single checkin.... and I have ended
> up causing regressions because I don't wait to re-run layout tests every
> time just because I am trying to get my files landed before someone else
> modified the ChangeLog again.
>
> On top of that sometimes the ChangeLog merges cleanly but puts your entry
> underneath others, and then you have to open the file and move your entry
> back to the top.  Sometimes I have not noticed this and then I land with
> someone else's commit message.
>
> I just don't get why people are willing to put up with this.  It's really
> driving me crazy.
>
> dave
>
>
> On Aug 26, 2009, at 3:34 PM, Chris Marrin wrote:
>
>
>> On Aug 26, 2009, at 3:26 PM, David Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>  I am so sick of Changelogs.  Every time I get a patch ready to land, I
>>> end up being blocked on commit because of conflicts in the stupid ChangeLog
>>> files.  Often even after I resolve conflicts, someone checks in again, and
>>> then I get conflicts all over again.
>>>
>>> If I have to make a minor change because of a code review, I often don't
>>> feel like I can even re-run layout tests, because waiting even 5 minutes
>>> just means I'm going to have conflicts again!
>>>
>>> Having everyone in the project hitting the same file when all of this
>>> information could be specified as part of checkin messages is just crazy.
>>>  How much productivity has been lost from everyone having to fix that stupid
>>> file... we've even written whole scripts just to deal with merge headaches
>>> from this file.
>>>
>>> What purpose do these stupid files even serve at this point?
>>>
>>> They need to die.
>>>
>>
>>
>> It's great to hear you say this. I agree and hit this issue all the time
>> as well. Like you say, the SVN log has the same information as the
>> Changelog. Maybe prepareChangelog should become prepareCommitMessage which
>> can generate a message template with slots for the reviewer and list the
>> files changed so you can still add details about the changes. It would make
>> life easier, I think...
>>
>> -----
>> ~Chris
>> cmarrin at apple.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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