Add a new way to document changes

* Makefile.in: Define the update-changes target to merge the change files
  from the changes directory to the top of the CHANGES file and remove
  them afterwards. If a Subversion binary was found during configure try
  to svn rm them otherwise just delete them.

* configure.in: Search for the Subversion binary.

* acinclude.m4: Set the corresponding Makefile variable for the Subversion
  binary.

* README.CHANGES: New file to document the new approach.


git-svn-id: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk@1879822 13f79535-47bb-0310-9956-ffa450edef68

1 files changed, 17 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/README.CHANGES b/README.CHANGES
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index 0000000000..ebea59ce4e
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+Changes can be documented in two ways now: Either by directly editing the
+CHANGES file like it was done until now or by storing each entry for the
+CHANGES file correctly formated in a separate file in the "changes" directory.
+
+The benefit of the single file per change approach is that it eases backporting
+the CHANGES entry to a stable branch as it avoids the frequent merge conflicts
+as changes are merged in different orders or not at all in the stable branch.
+
+In order to keep the current CHANGES file for the users as is there is a new
+make target called 'update-changes'. It merges all change files in the changes
+directory to the top of the CHANGES file and removes them afterwards.
+
+This make target can be seen in a similar way as the scripts to update the
+documentation files from its xml sources. It can be executed immediately
+after the new file in the changes directory has been created / merged
+and committed or it can executed later. It should be executed at least before
+a release gets tagged.