Re: Moved the source to git

[Daniel Hartwig <mandyke@gmail.com>]

On 17 May 2013 05:05, Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> wrote:
> Starting with future releases (next + 1), the changelog might be generated
> automatically from git (from the first lines of the commit message), so you
> will only have to enter a commit message, and not do changelog changes.
>
> Do you (or anyone else committing to APT) have any objections? I discussed
> this with Michael and it seems like a good idea.
>

We should go ahead and attempt this, it certainly can be an excellent
time saver especially as it removes debian/changelog conflicts when
merging.  Obviously it will take a couple of runs with heavy editing
to get it right :-)

Please be aware of git conventions for commit messages and how git-dch
imports them.  For example, the first line is usually a short (!)
summary of changes.  Making it longer impedes common git tools that
perhaps truncate the content or assume it is one line (thus, messing
up their formatting).  In bzr it is common to have a detailed
description here, but that does not work well in the git world.  As
many apt changelog items include more detail than this, probably we
should consider using git-dch --full and some discipline with the
commit messages, adapting changelog style, or adding the extra detail
in after git-dch.

Also note that some tools expect metadata such as "Closes: #foo" on
its own line.  And git-dch will do the right thing with that, making
sure that any such metadata ("Closes:" or "LP:") ends up in the
changelog.