[Haskell-cafe] Request for Changelogs

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

Am Donnerstag, den 06.08.2009, 15:39 +0100 schrieb Neil Mitchell:
> > So please, package authors, put Changes files in your packages and keep
> > the current for now.
> 
> The problem is that this is the kind of dull administration stuff that
> isn't coding in Haskell, so tends to get neglected. If I know there is
> a user demand for a changelog I'm happy to provide one, but I don't
> want to waste time on something that isn't useful. For people who have
> a near zero-upgrade cost (anyone who is using Cabal) I'd suggest they
> upgrade to all of my packages immediately. For this change, I'd say it
> probably isn't worth rolling a new debian binary unless it's
> particularly easy.
> 
> I will start a changelog in hlint - and for some of my projects
> (tagsoup) I do include a changelog in the user manual.

thanks, a changelog in the manual is at least a start. But the point I’d
like to make is that even if everyone provides a changelog somewhere, if
you need to keep track of four dozen packages[1], finding out where that
is on a per-package base is quite some hassle. And even ordinary users
are curious about the improvements that were made between two releases!

If the changelog had a properly specified format and location, cabal
upgrade could, if the user wants it, tell him all the downloaded
changes. This really helps him to keep up-to-date. It is also a good
channel for the authors to talk to his users („see this nice module I
added to the package“, „some parts of the API are deprecated now, please
move to this part“). Last but not least having documented changes is QA
measure that the Haskell platform in the wider sense deserves.

Greetings,
Joachim

-- 
Joachim "nomeata" Breitner
  mail: mail at joachim-breitner.de | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Key: 4743206C
  JID: nomeata at joachim-breitner.de | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/
  Debian Developer: nomeata at debian.org
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