commit IDs in changelog messsages (was: Introductory mail)

[martin f krafft]

also sprach Petr Baudis <pasky at ucw.cz> [2008.11.14.1301 +0100]:
> > In the long run, I really want to supersede "Closes:" anyway.
> > Ideally, the bug gets marked 'fix-committed' when a signed-off
> > commit closing the bug hits the repo (or a tag like
> > closes-123456 appears), and an upload would identify bugs closed
> > between the last upload and this one, using the repo and those
> > commit IDs, and then selectively close those bugs.
> 
> Then why do you actually keep the changelog? Usually about 50% of
> the times when I look at it is when I need to check "when was bug
> X fixed?".

The changelog

  (a) serves the data about which bug-closing-commits are actually
  part of the package that is being uploaded to the archive
  software, so that it can close the corresponding reports in the
  BTS

  (b) provides the information needed to answer questions such as
  yours to the user from a file in the package itself without
  requiring the user to go online or know the VCS

  (c) selects only the relevant commits, e.g. it wouldn't contain
  a commit "fix typo in last commit".

-- 
 .''`.   martin f. krafft <madduck at debian.org>
: :'  :  proud Debian developer, author, administrator, and user
`. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduck - http://debiansystem.info
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
 
"if java had true garbage collection,
 most programs would delete themselves upon execution."
                                                    -- robert sewell