Working with the tools - or around/against the tools

[Modestas Vainius]

Hi,

Thursday 03 July 2008, Ana Guerrero rašė:
> I do not care at all about using +++ Name or [ Name ] but when more than a
> person have worked in the package I like uploading it as a team upload as
> we have done until now. So not ok about changing that.
However, current practise is not consistent with regard to if there is only 
one maintainer doing changes, team name & address may not be used at the 
bottom. This practise should be avoided because:

1) Somebody is _always_ the first to make changes. So s(he) may put his/her 
name in the maintainer space of the changelog entry (lets call such entry 
entry).
2) Now the second maintainer committing changes has to:
  a) add +++ Changes by line for the first maintainer, which effectively means 
copy&pasting from the changelog maintainer field if 1st maitainer created a 
personal entry. A bit time consuming.
  b) add "+++ Changes for My name". Pretty easy.
  c) replace current changelog maintainer with Debian QT/KDE Maintainers. I 
usually end up copying and pasting from the previous non-personal entry (but I 
sometimes need to search for the it due to existence of personal entries).
3) Third and subsequent maintainners has only to do 2b. So the 1st or the 2nd 
maintainner gets the most additional work to do with the changelog.
4) If personal changelog entries are allowed, it effectively means that dch -m 
will not work for creating proper new revision entry after personal changelog 
entry. So the 1st maintainer has to do 2c in addition to 2b or create a new  
personal entry _or_ leave all the burden to the 2nd maintainer.

Most of these tasks can be automated by dch if the standard layout is used. 
However, dch behaviour depends on having the name of the real maintainer in 
the changelog maintainer field to transform personal entry to the team entry.

Having all this said, I very dislike personal changelog entries because they 
potentially leave more work for the 2nd maintainer (2a part). I never do them. 
So if to change anything at all, in my opinion, only the following 
alternatives are viable:

1) Do as dch supports now, i.e. do not use team in the changelog maintainer 
field (Sune proposal).
2) Do not change anything until "team name in the changelog maintainer" is 
implemented in dch (Ana's wish).
3) Disallow non-team name & address in the changelog mainainer field, hence 
everybody adds their own "+++ Changes by name". I can write svn hook which 
would enforce this rule. This will ensure that dch -m will always work 
properly for creating new changelog entries.

-- 
Modestas Vainius <modestas at vainius.eu>

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