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

[Antoine Pitrou]

Brett wrote:
>> Of course, we've talked about doing something like this before, it's
>> just never irritated anyone enough for them to sit down and *write*
>> the associated NEWS file generator, or the code to split the existing
>> NEWS file for the active branches :)
>
> I think that's overly complicated.

Agreed. I'm not surprised Twisted uses something like that :-), but we
don't need
that level of complexity.

> I don't see why we need anything
> more than simply NEWS/3.4, NEWS/3.3, etc. and just split the files per
> feature release since that's the interest (and merge) boundary.

You'll have to copy stuff by hand, though, if you don't want to rely on the
merge machinery. So we have two possible file layouts:

* (current) a single Misc/NEWS is merged from branch to branch. Pro: hg merge
copies the text for you. Con: hg merge sometimes screws up and you have to
clean up a large conflict.

* a dedicated Misc/NEWS-x.y per major version. Pro: no merge conflicts ever.
Con: you have to copy the message by hand when merging a bug fix to the upper
branch. Con: it's easy to forget to copy the message (hg won't yell if you
don't
do it), so people *will* forget (and it's annoying grunt work for those who
notice it).

The major con with the current scheme *might* be solved by a dedicated hg
extension, but someone needs to have enough free time and passion to try and
write it :-)

> And do
> we really need a merged NEWS file at that granularity?

Not really, IMO.

Regards

Antoine.