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

[Nick Coghlan]

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 1:10 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 4:40 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The 3.3 branch layout would look like this:
>>
>>     NEWS.next/
>>         3.3.txt  # Categorised changes
>
> Categorized how? E.g. Core,Lib,Docs, etc.? Or "3.3 only", "3.3 and 3.4"?

Just the existing categories. So Core, Library, etc

>>     NEWS  # Existing partial entry for 3.3.x
>
> And the accumulated history of all previous versions.

Indeed.

> But it's the 3.3+ changes that exist in both versions. That's the
> sticking point and where we always have merge problems. We might want
> to classify commits as 3.3 only, 3.3+3.4, or 3.4 only and have
> separate files for each case.

Yeah, I think that makes sense - we're going to know which we have
before we create the news entry, so how about if the layout looked
like this:

3.3 branch layout:

    NEWS.next/
        3.3.txt  # Forward ported
        3.3-only.txt # Not forward ported
    NEWS  # Existing partial entry for 3.3.x

The default branch layout would look like this:

    NEWS.next/
        3.3.txt  # Forward ported changes
        3.4.txt  # All 3.4 changes
   NEWS  # Existing partial entry for 3.4.0a1

Any changes that were specific to 3.3 would be listed in
NEWS.next/3.3-only.txt on that branch, but not on the default branch (since
the associated null-merge would always skip adding that file)

Now, we go to create 3.4.0a1 with this layout. This will involve
transferring *all* the
NEWS.next entries on default into the main NEWS file and clearing the
files in NEWS.next.

    NEWS.next/
        3.3.txt  # Empty file
        3.4.txt  # Empty file
   NEWS  # Complete entry for 3.4.0

We then go back to the 3.3 branch, and move all of the
NEWS.next/3.3.txt entries into NEWS.next/3.3-only.txt and do a null
merge.

    NEWS.next/
        3.3.txt  # Empty file
        3.3-only.txt # Not forward ported or already released for 3.4
    NEWS  # Existing partial entry for 3.3.x

When it comes time to create the next 3.3 release, the contents of
both NEWS.next/3.3.txt and NEWS.next/3.3-only.txt would be merged into
the main 3.3 NEWS file.

Does that seem workable?

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia