linux-kernel - Re: Changelog quality (was Re: [PATCH] uwb: make USB device id constant)

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Date:	Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:38:22 +0100 (CET)
From:	Julia Lawall <julia@...u.dk>
To:	Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>
Cc:	Németh Márton <nm127@...email.hu>,
	David Vrabel <david.vrabel@....com>, linux-usb@...r.kernel.org,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, cocci@...u.dk
Subject: Re: Changelog quality (was Re: [PATCH] uwb: make USB device id
 constant)

> When you write a changelog, keep your audience in mind:
> 
>   - Developers, distributors, advanced users want to learn what a new
>     release brings.  (OK, this audience stops reading after the initial
>     headline of a "make XYZ table constant" commit.  Which just means
>     that all the rest of the changelog is fluff that can be omitted.)
> 
>   - Developers, maintainers etc. want to understand years later why the
>     code is how it is.  (For them, a commit like that is sufficiently
>     described by the headline as well.)

Not surprisingly, I don't agree about this one.  I recall a series of 
patches that said something like "used a script to change down/up to 
mutexes".  The script wasn't included, not all down/ups were changed to 
mutexes, and in short there was no understandable trace of why the change 
was made where it was.  Perhaps that is a pathological example, but it is 
not necessarily obvious in advance what needs precise documentation and 
what does not.

julia
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