In search of the perfect changelog

Posted Apr 24, 2009 14:36 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875)
In reply to: In search of the perfect changelog by jlokier
Parent article: In search of the perfect changelog

That is what I take as the meaning of Impact. It is not what Ingo told me. There's a fine line between "Impact" and "Purpose". And although I view it as the purpose of the patch, the line itself does show an impact of the patch. But to find the Impact, I must first look for the purpose.

I can say, the impact of that patch is the prevention of false warn ons. There is a very subtle difference between the two.

In search of the perfect changelog

Posted May 1, 2009 21:54 UTC (Fri) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link]

There is a very subtle difference between the two.

One obvious difference is in the case of side effects (either temporary or long-term, e.g., "out-of-tree drivers depending on foobar semantics will no longer work"). In that situation the purpose is one thing, and the impact presumably includes that thing, but it also includes the side effects: i.e., the impact is a superset of the purpose (in such cases).

Greg