[Python-Dev] Committing a bug fix

[Terry Reedy]

On 9/28/2015 7:05 PM, Martin Panter wrote:
> On 28 September 2015 at 22:31, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>> . . . it may have merged in the wrong place, such as putting a things into the
>> 3.5.1 section of 3.6 NEWS, which should not be there.
>
> Since you mentioned this and I also noticed this, can I ask why the
> 3.5.1 section is there, if it isn’t meant to be?

I believe it should not be there and that everything in there should be 
moved to the 3.6.0a1 section (if not already there).  (I already did 
that for IDLE.) Every commit* to a particular branch should be in the 
NEWS section for the next release of that branch.  The purpose of the 
M.N.Pa section is to record commits to the M.N branch that will appear 
in the M.N.Pa release. AFAIK, this has always been the policy until this 
bogus 3.5.1 section was added to 3.6 NEWS.

*Multiple commits for what is conceptually the one patch for one issue 
may get folded together into one NEWS entry, but that does not change 
the gist of the claim.

In 3.5 NEWS, the 3.5.0a1 section follows 3.4.0 (final).  There are no 
3.4.1 etc sections.  All the commits to 3.5 that appeared in 3.5.0a1, 
which branched off from 3.4 at the final release or a bit sooner, are in 
the 3.5.0a1 section.

 > There are also other sections, going back to 3.4.0.

There are from before the 3.6 branch was separated from 3.5 (or vice 
versa, if you prefer).  In other words, before there was a 3.6.0a1 to 
commit to.  Whether NEWS should be cumulative or not is a different issue.

> When I have merged bug fixes into the default 3.6 branch I have
> sometimes let the NEWS entries be automatically be merged into the
> 3.5.1 section, without updating the 3.6.0 section, after I noticed
> other people doing this.

If I am correct as to the intent of each section, this is a mistake. I 
always revert NEWS merges and then save the separately edited file for 
the branch, because hg routinely either creates a (incorrect) conflict 
(for Idle items)* or now, with the incorrect 3.5.1 section in 3.6 NEWS, 
puts things in that incorrect place.

*My guess is that this results from hg merge considering both context 
match and offset when picking the 'best' merge.  For items after the 
Library section, the offset of a correct merge can be 100s of lines.

--
Terry Jan Reedy