Separate branch for experimental)

[Lars Wirzenius]

On ke, 2007-10-31 at 19:02 -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> > Soon after I switched from CVS to Bazaar (bzr), I stopped using
> > changelog files. Instead, before I make a release, I update a NEWS file
> > which summarizes the changes since the previous release, and also add a
> > dump of the commit messages (bzr log --long --verbose, more or less) to
> > sit next the tarball, but that is not included in the package itself.
> > 
> > So far I'm happy with this solution.
> 
> That offloads the work of writing a good changelog onto the person who
> makes the release.

That is possibly true. In multi-person projects, I'd have a rule saying
the committer must also write a good commit message. If a NEWS file
isn't required (it is a higher-level document than a changelog), the
commit message dump should suffice as a replacement for a changelog, in
my opinion. But since I mostly work alone on my projects, I don't have
much experience with this.

I think the bzr developers use something similar, though augmented by a
habit of having anyone who commits something that should be mentioned in
NEWS also update the NEWS file.

Lots of different ways of doing things, of course. Anything that works
well is good. :)