Re: Structured Changelogs for ELPA packages

Philip Kaludercic <[email protected]> writes:

> So I think we should veer this conversation back to the question of
> whether (actual) package maintainers would be OK with specifying a
> strict format for NEWS files, with some fixed changelog heading style as
> was previously mentioned, or if no agreement is viable and we should
> instead try our best server-side to detect sections in as many file
> formats as possible.

My opinion is that it is better to do our best to support multiple
possible formats, or simply rely on the git-based mechanism, which I had
already described and which avoids fixing a format.

I am a package maintainer and I maintain numerous changelogs, and then I
am a user of multiple packages. As a maintainer, I want to keep the
format I am using right now (Towncrier-like). As a user I would like to
read changelogs from other packages, and I don't want to convince
package maintainers to change the format they've used for years. While
consistency is good, I am glad if package maintainers provide changelogs
at all and there are more important things to do.

However if there is still interest to only want to support a list of
fixed formats, I suggest to support Towncrier-variants ("* <version>
(date)" and maybe variants like "* Version version (date)") and Keep a
Changelog "* [version] - date". Note that some package authors still use
other styles (e.g. packages by Jonas and Prot). Maybe these styles could
be supported too. I see nothing wrong with supporting multiple styles.
There is lots of precedent already, think about error messages in
compilation buffers for example.

Daniel