[dmd-beta] D 1.074 and 2.059 betas

[David Nadlinger]

On 22 May 2012, at 18:58, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Nick, what we usually do is each contributor takes care of the 
> changelog when fixing an error. Could you please insert a line for 
> each of these in next version's changelog (possibly with a note that 
> they've been fixed a release ago)?

Well, ideally yes – but on the other hand, changelog entries are 
usually left out of pull requests to avoid merging errors.

This issue has already been raised and discussed multiple times. Maybe 
we can finally find a clever way to keep the changelog separately, but 
still tied to version control. An idea that pops to my mind would be a 
simple table (e.g. in the form of a tiny web app) where people can post 
changelog messages along with a Git commit hash. When preparing the 
release, a script is run to query the list for all new commit IDs. If a 
matching messages is found, it is added to the changelog, otherwise a 
»changelog entry missing« warning is printed for that commit.

Hm, on the second thought, it might be much more safe and less work to 
just stick the changelog entries in the commit messages (in some 
agreed-on format, e.g. a DDoc-like »Changelog:« section), and simply 
accumulate them with a little script when preparing the release. Again, 
commits not including a message could conveniently be listed for manual 
inspection. This would eliminate all the problems with the current 
solution, and make compiling the changelog much less time consuming as 
well.

David