[Development] ChangeLogs

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 04:05:40PM +0100, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> two more approaches have been previously proposed:
> 
hjk suggested yet another approach: use gerrit itself to collect the
changelog entries. after some thinking, i came up with this process:
- add a ChangeLog: line to the commit message as in the previous
  proposal
- the commit-msg hook extracts and removes that line; the post-commit
  hook re-adds that line via git-notes
- change is pushed as usual - with git-gpush (which gets extended to
  push the notes as well)
- gerrit receives the commit and notes, creates a change, and attaches
  the changelog entry as an additional attribute to it
- up to now, everything was an optional extension - to save the
  contributor opening the gerrit page to add a changelog entry
- but of course, it would be possible to edit the changelog entry in the
  gui
- the changelog entry would be approved together with the actual change.
  whether this would happen in a separate review category, with the
  stage/submit button, or something yet different, i don't know.
- the system would require explicit action to approve the lack of a
  changelog entry
- for final storage, changelogs would be probably re-added as git
  notes again
- automated entry collection at release time would follow as with
  in-commit-message ChangeLog: entries

the advantages of the system:
- there is no "media break" like with a wiki or jira, as we use git and
  gerrit anyway
- the commit messages themselves are not "polluted"
- the changelog entries can be modified without amending and re-pushing
  the commit, thus not invalidating the actual review
- it would be also possible to let the reviewers write the changelog
  entry (which would then have to be approved by the contributor or
  another reviewer in turn)
- we could seamlessly switch from the in-commit-message ChangeLog:
  variant, as nothing would change in the manual steps at commit
  creation time (provided the notes-for-submission stuff would be
  implemented right away)
the downside is rather obvious:
- this needs to be implemented in gerrit (unless somebody already did
  something similar)

this is just a "step 2". it is in so far relevant, as the possibility of
adding this later may be considered an endorsement for the original
ChangeLog: variant.