[python-committers] what's going on with Misc/NEWS?

[Nick Coghlan]

On 25 May 2013 13:05, "R. David Murray" <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 24 May 2013 15:16:24 -0600, "Gregory P. Smith" <greg at krypto.org>
wrote:
> > On May 24, 2013 2:55 PM, "Antoine Pitrou" <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > Le vendredi 24 mai 2013 à 16:22 -0400, Brett Cannon a écrit :
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't understand why it's painful to backport. Can you explain?
> > > >
> > > > If I make a very minor fix to the docs I have to:
> > > >
> > > > # In a 3.3 checkout
> > > > Fix docs
> > > > Compile docs
> > > > Add Misc/NEWS entry
> > > > hg ci -m "repeat what I just said in Misc/NEWS"
> > > > hg push
> > > > cd ../default
> > > > hg merge 3.3
> > > > Fix/revert Misc/NEWS (at least)
> > > > Compile docs (if fix is needed)
> > > > hg ci
> > > > hg push
> > >
> > > I honestly don't understand why you would mention doc fixes (even
major
> > > ones) in Misc/NEWS. It's not a useful piece of information to have
> > > there. People want to know about bug fixes because they are affected
by
> > > bugs, but doc fixes??
> >
> > I think you misunderstood what he meant. Misc/NEWS is documentation. I
> > believe he meant he won't fix typos in NEWS due to the make pain
involved.
>
> No, he really meant he created a news entry for a doc change.  For a
> reasonable reason, in the example he gave :)
>
> But you certainly don't need a news entry for typos, or most other
> doc changes, IMO.
>
> > I'm the same way. I want nothing to do with news when making my changes
> > because it ALWAYS gets in the way for any change not being done on
> > head/default/tip only. If anything I prefer to leave news entries out of
> > the commit they are related to to avoid news merges going wrong from
> > messing up the real change. Hopefully I remember to write a news entry
for
> > it after the fact.
>
> In the subversion days almost every merge I did had a NEWS conflict.
> With hg, I only get a merge conflict if the most recent change to NEWS
> is a 3.3-only entry.  So, maybe half the time.  (I suppose if people
> are really sticking entries in randomly I might start seeing more
> conflicts...)
>
> I have no objection to the process being improved if someone is willing
> to do the scripting to improve it.  I personally would prefer not to
> simply have the files have different names, meaning I'd have to copy the
> news entry all the time instead of half the time.  But my objection is
> only about -0.25, so if more people prefer making the file names different
> in the absence of a better scripted solution, I'll live with it :)
> I just hope we don't start losing NEWS entries as as result.
>
> Oh, and my news entries are almost never the same as my commit one-lines,
> partly because I keep the commit line to *one* line, whereas the NEWS
> entry is typically two to three.  Keeping the first commit line to one
> line makes reading the log easier, IMO; but I suppose since not everybody
> does that it's really just a quirk :)
>
> But even without that the messages would different.  As someone else
> mentioned, I feel that the audiences are different...and in the commit
> message I assume that you are seeing the list of changed files as well,
> to give you context for the commit message that isn't present in the
> NEWS entry.

Yep, that's my view of commit vs NEWS as well.

Cheers,
Nick.

>
> --David
>
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