[Development] Change file process & improvement proposal

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 12:38:41PM +0000, Jani Heikkinen wrote:
> Lately it has been quite hard to get change files done for the releases.
>
oh, it's that time of the year again. :D

> 1) Let's enable [ChangeLog] -tag by default in commit template. After
> that you must remove/comment out it by purpose if you don't want add
> it.
>
i really don't think this will make a positive difference. the problem
is that many people just don't have the right audience-oriented mindset.
we *already* have lots of garbage changelog entries, and this will just
worsen the S/N ratio.

> And in addition to this update sanity bot so that it will give '-1' if
> change log entry isn't given in release branch.
>
this is probably not sensible. most last-minute fixes relate to recently
introduced problems, which means that they specifically *don't* need
changelog entries.

here's what i think would actually make a difference (based on
historical evidence within trolltech):
https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTQAINFRA-933

> 2) Let's agree every submodule in the release needs to have a change
> file (to make things clear)
> 
yes

> 3) Let's agree the change log is the diff between new & previous
> release in same series (in case of patch level release, meaning delta
> from x.y.z -> x.y.z+1). And for new major release the diff is from
> last patch release from previous series
> 
that seems a no-brainer to me. the tricky question is what to do with
LTS vs. stable, but we already resolved this: we duplicate the relevant
log entries.