[webkit-dev] ChangeLog Deprecation Plan

[Ryosuke Niwa]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 9:49 AM Jonathan Bedard via webkit-dev
<webkit-dev at lists.webkit.org> wrote:
>
> .. or robust solution. Bots need maintenance and intervention, and a bot with
> commit access has another set of issues. Repository admins occasionally
> rotating ChangeLogs is going to be less expensive than a bot doing it.
>
> Either way, it doesn't seem like this is a higher cost issue compared to
> all WebKit contributors having to change their workflows.
>
> We are moving to git. Workflows _are_ changing. I’m interested in making sure the workflows can achieve the same things the old ones did, not in preserving the old workflows.
>

Just because other parts of the workflow are changing, it doesn't mean
we should pile on even more changes. Honestly, this whole discussion
loses me hope that the WebKit project won't remain something I want to
keep contributing to in the future.

> folks familiar with git won?t realize what has happened until they see
> their PR diff), ?mandatory? is a bit tougher because we can?t prevent folks
> from filing a pull request without using tooling. At that point, we?re
> where we are today with PR template that encourages tool usage, explains
> how to craft a PR the ways tools do it and then reviewers acting as a
> gate-keeper. The last point is more about project policy than it is tooling.
>
> We should automatically reject such PR requests.
>
> We should not automatically reject PRs made in good faith.
>
> One of the reasons we’re moving to GitHub is to make the project more approachable for new contributors. Having a machine rejects PRs because a contributor is not familiar with project norms goes against this goal.

We need to. Otherwise, support for COMMIT_MESSAGE files would be
pretty much meaningless. I need those files as a reviewer, not as a
patch author.

- R. Niwa