Bug#459427: Patch seeking seconds on changelog vs. NEWS handling
On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 08:09:48PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> writes:
>
> > It's become clear that we do not have consensus on recommending that
> > only the release notes be installed, and not also the changelog.
>
> I'm happy to see this go into Policy, but I find it unfortunate that we're
> unwilling to take a stance against this. The source-level ChangeLog is
> essentially useless in Debian binary packages, and I've seen packages
> waste megabytes (compressed!) of space on it. I'm installing it in one of
> my own packages because I felt an obligation to do so because Policy said
> I should, and I'm very happy to remove it.
Hello Russ,
I am fine with the removal of source-level changelogs, with the provisio
that the concept of source-level changelog be clearly defined in policy.
This needs to be worded carefully so that maintainers do not start
removing user-oriented changelogs that happen to be named 'changelog',
'Changelog', etc. It is also not uncommon for packages to have both a
user-oriented changelog and a NEWS file (which is basically the tl;dr of
the user-level changelog).
In that sense, the latest draft of Sean is a step in the right direction.
I might be wrong, but I do not think the majority of upstream changelog
are source-level changelog, except for GNU software. Changing debhelper
not to install upstream changelog by default will likely create more
bugs than it will fix.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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