If we ever want to have a nice workflow where we
can automate as much as possible, we need to figure out a way
deal with our most common merge conflict: Misc/NEWS. Thanks to
shifts in the format between different minor versions the file
is pretty much guaranteed to have a conflict when doing a
merge up a version.
So how do we solve this? I can remember 3 possible
solutions that have been proposed previously:
- A single file per entry
- A single file per release version of Python
- Automating it based on commit messages
I personally prefer #3 as I hate repeating myself since
I just copy and paste the first line(s) of my commits to
Misc/NEWS as it is anyway (basically up to the first pair
of newlines). We would need a way to signal that the
commit message contains nothing useful for the
to-be-generated NEWS file when it's simply a fix for a
previous commit (probably some marker that is somewhat
inconspicuous like a dash on its own line or something).
In terms of the section of the NEWS file that a commit
belongs, that can once again be a marker or honestly
something we drop or infer based on what files were edited
in the commit.