[webkit-dev] Proposal: Immediate Deprecation of ChangeLogs

[Jonathan Bedard]

A few weeks ago, I started a discussion about deprecating ChangeLogs. In that time, we’ve had more folks using the pull-request workflow and more folks using newer versions of `git` which break automatic ChangeLog rebasing. I propose that on Monday, May 16th, we implement the following policy changes for the WebKit project:

- Commits no longer require ChangeLogs, they instead require commit messages
- Commit messages are in the format of `prepare-ChangeLog --no-write`

Pull-request workflows based on `git-webkit` already support this workflow well, and `git-webkit setup` creates a `prepare-commit-msg` hook that will appropriately format commit messages. In addition, `git format-patch` allows us to create a patch which contains a commit message. This means that contributors still using patch workflows from a git or git-svn checkout will be able to upload compliant patches to bugzilla.

This will, however, break contributors using pure-Subversion checkouts. This is something that’s going to be happening in the very near future as we deprecate Subversion entirely, so I think this is an acceptable cost in exchange for fully supporting native git workflows.

The last thing I’d like to note is that a full git-native commit message policy now is something we can modify in the future if we find that reviewing commit messages with “Quote reply” comments is not sufficient, but resolving project disagreements on how or if to address deficiencies in GitHub commit message review don’t seem to be headed towards a resolution quickly.

Jonathan
WebKit Continuous Integration