[core-workflow] the Misc/NEWS problem

[R. David Murray]

On Thu, 06 Aug 2015 18:16:53 -0000, Brett Cannon <bcannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > However, having a commit log based generator offers a relatively
> > decent way to deal with that: a Misc/NEWS.overrides directory, with
> > filename prefixes based on the commit hashes to be overridden.
> >
> 
> This is making me prefer MAL's #4 solution.

I'm liking this solution as well...there's programming work to be done
regardless, and adding a tracker field isn't *that* hard.

However, the problem Nick points out above is really still an issue we
ought to address at some point even if we don't take NEWS info from the
commit messages, because it would be nice to be able to do some
automated checks about the relationships between issues and commits, and
to do that we have to have some way to "edit" the commit messages where
we specify the wrong issue number.

Could there be some sort of Mercurial solution for that problem?

In addition to the "NEWS relevant changes *must* have a tracker issue"
(which I agree is good anyway), another thing to keep in mind for the
tracker based proposal is that it will make the versions and resolution
fields more meaningful, and thus more care must be taken with those
fields.  I don't see this as a bad thing either, but it is something we
need to recognize and deal with if we deploy this solution.

Oh, and it does mean that the technique we have sometimes used of
removing versions from the list once the fix is committed to that
version would have to be changed.  So that involves some retraining
as well.

--David