From: Linus Torvalds Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:02:44 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] show_date(): rename the "relative" parameter to "mode" Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On Tue, 27 Feb 2007, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > > And you are no supporter of a GNU ChangeLog? Imagine being able to produce > a GNU style ChangeLog of the Linux kernel in no time at all... I don't think the GNU style ChangeLog is particularly good. In fact, I think it has an unfortunate tendency (thanks to being per-file-log) to encourage people to commit unrelated changes and then explain them per file. Of course, you can't do that under git anyway, but I sure hope people don't start thinking that they should explain their changes in the git commit messages that way - my point being that certain log formats tend to encourage certain behaviour, and the GNU log format I think tends to do that exactly the wrong way around. That said, listing the functions that got changed (which I don't know if you did, but some GNU changelogs do) may be a nice thing. And hey, if some project wants GNU changelogs, I'm not against them. I just don't think they are in any way "superior", and the per-file comments really turn me off. But the "short date + author name" on one line part I certainly don't disagree with. I often use "git log --stat", and the three-line default header that git uses is a bit verbose (but at least a shortened commit name would be good - one of the things I then do is that I may want to look in more detail at a commit). Linus