Accepted: ubuntu-dev-tools 0.33 (source)

[Colin Watson]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 10:18:22PM +0100, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Scott Kitterman [2008-07-18 16:12 -0400]:
> > I'm quite suprised to find this point controversial.
> 
> Actually, me too, just for exactly opposite reasons (avoiding stating
> the obvious repeatedly, which is reflected by the fact that the
> changelog is added completely mechanically).
> 
> I'm interested in a quick straw-poll whether other people would like
> to return back to the old behaviour. In that case, I'm ok with
> reverting the change and just biting my tongue when reading future
> changelogs and merge logs.

I find documenting the Maintainer field change to be useless noise, and
do not document it myself. As a frequent apt-listchanges user, I would
appreciate not having my pager filled with endless duplicates of tedious
process verbiage. It should not be mentioned in merge changelogs either.

Package changelogs should document logical changesets that are useful
for users or developers to know. This is neither: a user doesn't need to
know it from the changelog (they'll run apt-cache show or whatever) and
a developer doesn't need to know it because every Ubuntu-modified
package shares the same change. If we need to scan the archive for
whether we're complying with DebianMaintainerField, we'll just do so,
not try to scan for notes in changelogs. Documenting the Maintainer
field adds no value for anyone - the only reason to do so is an
attachment to process for the sake of process - and therefore it should
not be done.

The only reason it ever makes sense to document the Maintainer field
change is when it's the only change in an upload, in which case you need
to say *something* in the changelog. However, I don't think there should
be any need for such uploads any more.

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]