`add_changelog_entry` does not add the `-` prefix

[LecrisUT]

What happened? What is the problem?

I guess it is in the documentation that it doesn't introduce the - but I missed it. Is there any reason why not to always add it?

What did you expect to happen?

No response

Example URL(s)

No response

Steps to reproduce

1.
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Workaround

• [x] There is an existing workaround that can be used until this issue is fixed.

Participation

• [ ] I am willing to submit a pull request for this issue. (Packit team is happy to help!)

[nforro]

This is not a bug, it's on purpose.

Is there any reason why not to always add it?

What if you want to add multiple lines, some prefixed with - and some not? Other distributions (than Fedora/RHEL) can have different conventions and use a different character (or none at all).

[LecrisUT]

I think it would be a list of comments?

Other distributions (than Fedora/RHEL) can have different conventions and use a different character (or none at all).

Doesn't rpmlint/rpminspect and maybe other tools complain if you have the changelog missformatted?

[nforro]

I think it would be a list of comments?

But how do you differentiate between single and multi-line items in a list? For example:

* Thu Nov 05 2020 Nikola Forró <[email protected]> - 1.5.4-1
- New upstream release 1.5.4
- Increase test timeout, 300 seconds is not always enough
  for test_logpdf_overflow on s390x

I think this is a common practice.

Doesn't rpmlint/rpminspect and maybe other tools complain if you have the changelog missformatted?

Do they complain about the above? (it's from https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/scipy/blob/rawhide/f/scipy.spec)

[nforro]

But how do you differentiate between single and multi-line items in a list?

I suppose you could pass a list with (some) items containing \n, but I'm not sure I like that.

[LecrisUT]

But how do you differentiate between single and multi-line items in a list?

I've used context managers to handle that and the indenting for my work on a sphinx autodoc, basically ux wise it is:

with contents.new_changelog_entry():
    contents.write("first line")
    contents.write("continue on second line")
    contents.new_item()
    contents.write("new item now")
"""
* <date> <author> - <maybe_release>
- first line
  continue on second line
- new item now
"""

(internally I just keep a flag in the context item if I need either a new-item symbol or an indent and the indent level)

And at the very least it wouldn't break compatibility. Sphinx/docutils is very peculiar in how it interacts with contents, but I think here you could have a more user-friendly interface