maint: Stop generating ChangeLog from git

Our ChangeLog is generated by basically redirecting the output
of 'git log' into it so, as can be expected, it has only gotten
bigger as development has progressed. As of today, its size has
reached pretty much comical levels:

  $ du -sk ChangeLog
  11328 ChangeLog

All of that for information *literally nobody* cares about: end
users and distro maintainers have proper release notes lovingly
compiled for them, while developers peruse the history either by
calling 'git log' directly or through their favorite $EDITOR's
git integration.

Replacing the generated ChangeLog with a short message pointing
interested parties to the git repository does not only reduce
the size of the unpacked sources from 259904 KiB to 248576 KiB
(~4% saving): from a quick test on my laptop, doing so reduces
the size of the *compressed* release archive from 15140 KiB to
12364 KiB (~18% saving) and also takes the time needed to run
'make distcheck' down from 4:44 to 4:21 (~8% saving).

Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Ján Tomko <jtomko@redhat.com>

diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 3223cf1b765c41ae60b839d486dfa39676eaec0e..c918ec82265ebe5575eca0229b912a1139a75693 100644 (file)
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -37,7 +37,6 @@
 .sc-start-sc_*
 .ycm_extra_conf.py
 /AUTHORS
-/ChangeLog
 /GNUmakefile
 /INSTALL
 /NEWS

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
new file mode 100644 (file)
index 0000000..55eb05c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+libvirt ChangeLog
+=================
+
+The libvirt project doesn't include a detailed ChangeLog in its release
+archives.
+
+If you're interested in the full list of changes made to libvirt since
+the project was started, you can clone the git repository from
+
+  https://libvirt.org/git/libvirt.git
+
+and browse them locally using your favorite git history viewer or,
+alternatively, browse them online at
+
+  https://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt.git;a=log

diff --git a/Makefile.am b/Makefile.am
index 3c06e2619a1d045df04e4245c1a55e140724fdaa..ebfcbec07a98b07aa5da19fe401eda9594d09309 100644 (file)
--- a/Makefile.am
+++ b/Makefile.am
@@ -79,19 +79,7 @@ check-access:
 
 MAINTAINERCLEANFILES = .git-module-status
 
-dist-hook: gen-ChangeLog gen-AUTHORS
-
-# Generate the ChangeLog file (with all entries since the switch to git)
-# and insert it into the directory we're about to use to create a tarball.
-gen_start_date = 2009-07-04
-.PHONY: gen-ChangeLog
-gen-ChangeLog:
-       $(AM_V_GEN)if test -d .git; then \
-         $(top_srcdir)/build-aux/gitlog-to-changelog \
-           --since=$(gen_start_date) > $(distdir)/cl-t; \
-         rm -f $(distdir)/ChangeLog; \
-         mv $(distdir)/cl-t $(distdir)/ChangeLog; \
-       fi
+dist-hook: gen-AUTHORS
 
 .PHONY: gen-AUTHORS
 gen-AUTHORS:

diff --git a/bootstrap.conf b/bootstrap.conf
index c2194df80bdb41f439d2dff8f7cf77cab21fe781..b63acffcdb2def20ded9ca44a5037674e91ae4c7 100644 (file)
--- a/bootstrap.conf
+++ b/bootstrap.conf
@@ -176,8 +176,8 @@ xmllint        -
 xsltproc   -
 "
 
-# Automake requires that ChangeLog and AUTHORS exist.
-touch AUTHORS ChangeLog || exit 1
+# Automake requires that AUTHORS exist.
+touch AUTHORS || exit 1
 
 # Override bootstrap's list - we don't use mdate-sh or texinfo.tex.
 gnulib_extra_files="

diff --git a/cfg.mk b/cfg.mk
index a62d4db13bc9c8856f58f5a882668c3a98c4522c..8594f64482594074dd1e3ced3193866ab83d80b4 100644 (file)
--- a/cfg.mk
+++ b/cfg.mk
@@ -1113,7 +1113,7 @@ maint.mk Makefile: _autogen_error
   # though, as it would be quite pointless
   ifeq (2,$(_dry_run_result)$(_clean_requested))
     $(info INFO: running autogen.sh is required, running it now...)
-    $(shell touch $(srcdir)/AUTHORS $(srcdir)/ChangeLog)
+    $(shell touch $(srcdir)/AUTHORS)
 maint.mk Makefile: _autogen
   endif
 endif