release notes file

[Mark Johnston]

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.