[Development] Changelogs for 5.3.0

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 12:26:41AM -0700, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> Em qua 23 abr 2014, às 09:16:05, Joerg Bornemann escreveu:
> > On 23-Apr-14 09:04, Giuseppe D'Angelo wrote:
> > > And no, commit message and changelog can't use the same rules.
> > 
> > Well you can have simple rules or people making mistakes. It's as simple
> > as that.
> > 
luckily, we have attentive reviewers, right?

> > At the very least it should be more visible which linguistic mode we
> > have to use in what context and where a haiku would be appropriate.
> 
> We can standardise on the simple past for everything. Just note that it costs 
> you 2 extra characters on the 72-character subject line (and the sanity bot 
> starts complaining at 67).
> 
it's actually gerrit, following the git recommendations (which are
optimized for shortlog, log --oneline, merge --log, etc. in an 80 col
terminal). the bot is more liberal.

> Still, that doesn't change the fact that the two things have two
> different audiences and convey two different messages.
>
that's precisely the crux. many of the entries you pointed out make it
blatantly obvious that a lot of people don't think at all about whom
they are writing for. it would appear that it's just another box to be
checked in a form (the commit message template, that is) ... with that
mindset, the different tense requirements are the least of the problems.

on the upside, it seems that the commit messages (at least in qtbase,
from a quick glance) have a reasonable quality, and noobs are usually
quickly clued in by the reviewers.