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vc-dwim is a version-control-agnostic ChangeLog diff and commit tool.
vc-chlog is a ChangeLog writing helper tool.

It is useful if you like to maintain a ChangeLog file describing
the changes you make to version-controlled files.  vc-dwim works with
the following version control systems: git, mercurial, bzr, svn, cvs,
and darcs.  It should be easy to add support for more.

What can vc-dwim do?
====================
vc-dwim can save you from making some small mistakes when using
version control programs from the command line.

For example, if you have unsaved changes in an editor buffer and use
vc-dwim to print diffs or to commit changes involving that file, it will
detect the problem, tell you about it, and fail.  This works as long as
you use Emacs or Vim.

Another common error you can avoid with this tool is the one where you
create a new file, add its name to Makefiles, etc., mention the addition
in a ChangeLog, but forget to e.g., "git add" (or "hg add", etc.) the
file to the version control system.  vc-dwim detects this discrepancy
and fails with a diagnostic explaining the probable situation.  You might
also have simply mistyped the file name in the ChangeLog.

Also, vc-dwim makes it a little easier/safer to commit a strict subset
of the modified files in a working directory.  But no one ever does *that*.

How can you use vc-dwim?
========================

Print diffs of arbitrary files:
------------------------------
Use an alias like this to show all or specified diffs:

    cv='vc-dwim --diff'

Use that when you want to see diffs of a specified file, regardless
of whether you have written new ChangeLog entries for it.
It works the same for bzr, cvs, git, hg, svn, darcs repositories, as long
as all you want are the difference between your local copy and the
checked out version.

Print diffs of files with new ChangeLog entries:
-----------------------------------------------
Let's say you have made local changes to a file, and you've also added
at least one corresponding entry in a ChangeLog file.  Then, you can use
"vc-dwim ChangeLog" to print the diffs for which there are ChangeLog
entries, warning about the potential problems mentioned above (editor
temporaries that can imply there are unsaved changes, and files listed in
ChangeLog, but not "cvs add"ed).  If your changes affect files covered by
more than one ChangeLog, you might use "vc-dwim ChangeLog lib/ChangeLog",
or more concisely, "vc-dwim {,lib/}ChangeLog".


Commit changes to files with new ChangeLog entries:
--------------------------------------------------
Use "vc-dwim --commit ChangeLog"
or  "vc-dwim --commit ChangeLog lib/ChangeLog src/ChangeLog"
to commit the changes you would see without the --commit option.

Assuming you have completed a change and have documented everything in
one or more ChangeLog file, run "vc-dwim --commit ChangeLog" to commit
that ChangeLog file and the files "implied" by the new ChangeLog lines.
The commit log message is derived from the added ChangeLog lines.  With a
single ChangeLog file, the log message is nearly identical to the list
of added lines.  One leading TAB is removed and any "date  user-name  <email>"
lines are elided.  When there are two or more ChangeLog files, the log
message includes a line for each indicating the affected directory.
For example:

[ChangeLog]
* some-file-in-top-level-dir: ...
[lib/ChangeLog]
* lib.c: ...
[m4/ChangeLog]
* foo.m4: ...


What can vc-chlog do?
=====================
vc-chlog is about writing GNU Coding Standards-compliant ChangeLog
entries easily.

Say you have made some changes to your code, ready to be committed.
The only remaining part is to write one or more ChangeLog entries:
for each ChangeLog governing a part of the package, collect the list
of changed files, in each file list the changed functions, and mention
all of those, in order to afterwards describe the changes:
	* file1.c (foo, bar, ...): ...
	* file2.c (baz): ...

vc-chlog attempts to help with this step.  It scans the diff (obtained
by "vc-dwim --diff" or passed on standard input with --stdin) for the
files that were touched and the set of lines that have been changed.
It then uses the "ctags" program to try to find out in which functions
those changes have occurred, and formats the file and functions names
in a prototype ChangeLog entry form on standard output.

There is a crucial assumption behind this idea to work well in practice:
ctags should be able to generate tags for the identifiers that changed.
For example, it should list functions in C source files (but not function-
local or other nested entities); it should list macros in M4 files (e.g.,
those that serve as input to Autoconf), or it should list "@node"s in
Texinfo files.  The output of vc-chlog improves with that of ctags.

Exuberant Ctags is a powerful and extensible implementation of this
command, and therefore preferred.  For example, with the .ctags file in
this package:
  --langmap=Sh:+.in

it detects the shell script vc-chlog.in as such.  With a ~/.ctags containing
  --langdef=Texinfo
  --langmap=Texinfo:.texi.txi.texinfo
  --regex-texinfo=/^@node[	 ]+([^,]+)/\1/d,definition/

it detects Texinfo node names (vc-chlog uses some heuristic to deal with
spaces in the identifier names when Exuberant Ctags is used).

Autoconf macros may be tagged by options such as
  --langdef=m4
  --langmap=m4:.m4.at.ac.as.m4sh
  --regex-m4=/^(m4_def(ine|un(|_once))|A[CU]_DEFUN(|_ONCE)|AU_ALIAS)\(\[*([a-zA-Z0-9_()+]+)/\5/d,definition/


vc-chlog tries to find out about added as well as removed identifiers
by examining both the new and the old version of a file.  Here, it works
hard not to change any file in your working directory, by using "ctags -x"
and keeping all intermediate files in a temporary directory.

For some languages, vc-chlog attempts to guess where functions end,
and thus not attribute changes past that end to the previous identifier.

Typically, vc-chlog is exact in the list of files that changed, false
negatives in the list of identifiers stem from a "ctags" that failed
to enumerate all identifiers properly, or changes before a function,
false positives typically stem from constructs like nested functions.

Use vc-chlog with multiple ChangeLog files in a project
-------------------------------------------------------
If a project uses multiple ChangeLog files, vc-chlog assumes that changes
are to be recorded in the log file that is nearest up the directory tree.
One possibility is to invoke vc-chlog always from the project root and put
the output of
  find . -name ChangeLog | sed 's,^\./,--changelog ,'

into the .vc-chlogrc file at the root.

========================================================================
Copyright (C) 2008-2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.