[Debichem-devel] The drawbacks of dummy changelog entries

[Andrius Merkys]

Hi Santiago,

On 2025-03-17 15:13, Santiago Vila wrote:
> I've just made a team upload of dbcsr, as it fails in Salsa CI:
> 
> https://salsa.debian.org/debichem-team/dbcsr/-/pipelines/829636
> 
> and also in some of my autobuilders:
> 
>      -------------------------------------------------------------------
>      There are not enough slots available in the system to satisfy the 2
>      slots that were requested by the application:
>        ./dbcsr_tensor_test
>        Either request fewer procs for your application, or make more slots
>        available for use.
>      -------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> While doing so I noticed that there was a dummy changelog entry
> for 2.8.0-2:
> 
> dbcsr (2.8.0-2) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
> 
> Such dummy changelog entries make tracker.debian.org to signal
> that there is something wrong with the repo:
> 
> https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dbcsr
> 
> version in VCS is newer than in repository, is it time to upload?
> 
> So, I'm not sure where this tradition comes from, maybe from the time
> we did not have this tracker thing which takes care of repo health,
> but I don't see that there is a clear benefit in doing those dummy
> changelog entries. (So I hope you forgive me if I don't make them).

For each Salsa repository there will be at most one UNRELEASED ("dummy") 
debian/changelog entry, which is not meant to be uploaded until someone 
does s/UNRELEASED/unstable/ and releases the package. I have seen this 
practice in >2 teams and I think it has some benefits.

First, it shows that new release is in progress. It might be that 
someone is working actively, made a drive-by change, or hit a roadblock.

Second, it documents changes since the last update of debian/changelog. 
While one might say that 'git log' does the same, 'git log' usually 
contains much more noise. I personally work in small commits without 
rebasing them.

Third, it is a convenient place for todo list for the upcoming upload.

You are not required to make UNRELEASED changelog entries if you do not 
want to. Nevertheless they seem to be the place where the most 
developers will look before uploading. Therefore I believe they will get 
more attention than 'git log' or BTS. This is not ideal, alas.

Best wishes,
Andrius