[bind10-dev] Proposal for keeping the ChangeLog up to date

[Shane Kerr]

Jinmei,

On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 17:24 -0700, JINMEI Tatuya / 神明達哉 wrote:
> At Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:40:40 +0800,
> Shane Kerr <shane at isc.org> wrote:
> 
> > So, my specific proposal is to update the code review procedure. One of
> > the things to do will be to review the ChangeLog for the ticket. When
> > the ticket is merged, the ChangeLog in trunk will be updated based on
> > the branch.
> > 
> > Thoughts?
> 
> Where should we show the would-be ChangeLog entry?  Pasting it on the
> ticket?  One minor technical issue is that we include the svn revision
> number on trunk in ChangeLog entries, and the number is unknown at the
> time of review.  (I suspect this is not a svn specific issue).

What we did in DHCP-land was include the proposed update in the
RELEASE-NOTES file, something like this:

*** PLACEHOLDER FOR MERGE ***
- DHCP was changed to create life and harness the power of the atom.
  Thanks to sci-fi-guy at future.com for patches. 
****************************** 

When the code is merged into the trunk, the notes are updated by hand.
In the case of BIND 10, we could do this the same way, although it would
be a two-step commit process:

     1. Merge the branch into the trunk, EXCEPT for the proposed
        ChangeLog entry. Get the Subversion revision number from this.
     2. Update the ChangeLog on the trunk with the proposed entry and
        the Subversion revision number, then commit.

This may not be optimal. For example, you can't blindly use Subversion
merging. (This was never a problem for ISC DHCP, because it is CVS and
nobody in their right mind would rely on CVS merging.) It seemed to work
okay, but maybe keeping the proposed ChangeLog in the ticket is a better
approach for this reason.

--
Shane