Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2019 20:36:16 -0400 From: Mark Johnston <markj@freebsd.org> To: "Bjoern A. Zeeb" <bz@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, re@freebsd.org Subject: Re: release notes file Message-ID: <20190624003616.GA90409@raichu> In-Reply-To: <55030704-F521-4D6E-9B56-4B7F65EFFC38@FreeBSD.org> References: <20190623191818.GA84365@raichu> <55030704-F521-4D6E-9B56-4B7F65EFFC38@FreeBSD.org>
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On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 11:23:57PM +0000, Bjoern A. Zeeb wrote: > On 23 Jun 2019, at 19:18, Mark Johnston wrote: > > Hi, > > > Today we add a Relnotes tag to commits that warrant a release note. > > My impression is that it doesn't work so well: if a committer forgets > > or doesn't know to add one there's no way to amend the commit message > > (same for MFCs), and a commit message isn't a convenient place to > > write > > the text of a release note. I would like to propose adding a > > top-level > > RELNOTES file instead, which like UPDATING would document notes for > > specific commits. It would be truncated every time the head branch is > > forked, and changes to it would be MFCed. This fixes the > > above-mentioned problems and would hopefully reduce the amount of time > > needed by re@ to compile release notes. > > Hooray. Can we put that file into the doc repo, so that the ports > people, and the docs people, and all other kinds of hats can put things > in there as well? Virtually all of the 12.0 release notes are for src/ (there are 4 lines for ports/pkg and 1 line for docs, and the latter describes a new man page in src). Why is it important to have a single place for everyone to commit their entries? > Oh, the release notes go into the doc repo anyway. Can we just put them > in the right place and just fill them from a skeleton where they should > be and naturally grow the document (feel free to use a different markup > language once doc is ready for that). > > Oh, with that release notes are written automatically and you are still > responsible for that your stuff is in there. And the release notes only > need an editing pass in the end? > > And the wiki pages like “What’s cooking for 13?” or similar could > just vanish as we’d have these updated at least every 10 minutes > automatically .. on our web server under /releases/ where they belong .. > > How amazing would that be? I would guess that many src committers simply won't add release notes if they have to commit to a second repository and use some unfamiliar markup format and worry about validating the file. There are lots of __FreeBSD_version bumps that go undocumented until someone else goes in and fills in the missing entries. A plain-text file in src repo for src release notes is low-friction and creates only marginally more work for RE. "What's cooking for 13?" can just point to the copy of RELNOTES in svnweb. That said, I personally would try to commit my release notes to a doc repo file if one existed. I've spent a few minutes trying to compile the 12.0 notes on my desktop and have not been able to get past, "cannot parse http://www.FreeBSD.org/XML/share/xml/freebsd-xhtml-release.xsl". So, I'm probably not a good person to set up release notes for 13.0. I will help fill in entries for commits since the 12.0 if someone else does that setup.
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