svn commit: r350505 - in head: contrib/binutils/binutils/doc gnu/usr.bin/binutils/objdump

[Ian Lepore]

On Thu, 2019-08-01 at 10:39 -0700, John Baldwin wrote:
> On 7/31/19 8:13 PM, Ed Maste wrote:
> > On Thu, 1 Aug 2019 at 12:51, Rodney W. Grimes <
> > freebsd at gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
> > > 
> > > That would be fine, the important thing is that the
> > > r350505 gets listed in the file,
> > 
> > I don't see any reason that r350505 specifically should be in a
> > release note - this is a minor clarification of an existing
> > deprecation notice. It seems having an overall "deprecation
> > notices"
> > section in the release notes would make sense, but they should
> > really
> > persist from version to version. Should we add a top-level
> > DEPRECATION_NOTICES file perhaps? Or tag deprecation notices with
> > some
> > sort of comment in the source so they can be found with a 'grep'
> > during release preparation?
> 
> I think it would make sense to have "sections" in RELNOTES that mimic
> the sections we have in the existing release notes (e.g. kernel vs
> userland).  That is effectively what GDB does with a top level NEWS
> file.  This approach would hopefully make it easier to translate this
> file into the real release notes.  It also means that a given "note"
> can evolve over time (e.g. it might start with "XYZ is deprecated" to
> "XYZ is removed" if a deprecation note is added and merged and later
> it
> is removed) rather than only having a running journal ala UPDATING.
> 
> On the question of whether we want a dedicated section just for
> deprecation notices, I'm not sure.  Probably we can just stick with
> the
> layout of our existing release notes?
> 

I wonder why it is that this relnotes file is some kind of major
attractor for complexity?

As I understand it, the *entire* intent of this file was "if you forget
to add Relnotes: yes" to a commit, this gives you a way to flag the
commit after the fact, since commit messages are immutable.

If people realize they forgot Relnotes: yes, and the remedy for that is
that they have to spelunk around in some complex formatted file to find
the "right section" (whatever that means)... well, I think in the real
world: they won't.

-- Ian