Re: Changelogs on kernel.org

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>]

Linus Torvalds wrote:

>The 2.4.x changelogs seem to be done with my "release" scripts, but
>additionally they don't have the same kind of detailed information that
>the 2.5.x kernels have, and yes, the result is fairly ugly.
>
>What are peoples opinion about the "full" changelog format that v2.5.x
>kernels have? Should we sort that too by author?
>

Sorting might help a tiny bit...

I thought about this, when I saw the 2.4.x changelogs.  Typical GNU 
projects seem to have a pretty decent system going -- there is a 
detailed ChangeLog, and an abbreviated high level summary NEWS, for each 
release.

So IMO a good solution would not be to change the format of the BK 
changelogs, but to supplement them with the type of summary that looks 
like the "old Linus" changelogs, i.e. a summary generated by a human:

    Martin Dalecki - IDE updates
    Al Viro - VFS updates
    Andi Kleen - x86-64 update
    ...

The central complaint about BK changelogs seems to be that they are too 
verbose for a quick scan of what a new kernel version contains.  (while 
at the same time lauding the additional information BK provides over the 
old changelogs)

Marcelo gave it a good shot, by (it appears) generating a summary by 
taking the first line of each cset.  The better solution would be a 
human-generated NEWS file.

    Jeff